


Flipside

by JackieWepps



Category: Haikyuu!!, 終わりのセラフ | Owari no Seraph | Seraph of the End
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Some Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-08 05:09:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 32,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8831677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackieWepps/pseuds/JackieWepps
Summary: It's a normal day. Shinoa and her squad are on patrol and everything is going as usual until a white light appears and Yuu, Yoichi and Kimizuki are suddenly transported to an entirely new room. At Karasuno High School things are normal as well until Sugawara, Nishinoya and Kageyama are surrounded by a white light and disappear. The next they see is a broken world. What happened and how to make things go back to normal? How will someone who are used to living the ordinary life manage living in a post-apocalyptic world, and how will those from the post-apocalyptic world manage living in an ordinary world?





	1. The Portal

It was actually a normal day, or at least it felt that way as Yuu woke up and sat up in bed. He had woken up a little late he realized and therefore hurried to get up. He got dressed quickly. They had a mission today, or a mission was perhaps an overstatement. They were just going on patrol for a couple of hours, the entire squad.

Shinoa had said that no one expected for anything to happen while they were out but Yuu had his hopes up. Of course it wouldn’t be considered a “good thing” if they were attacked by a vampire or something else, but the past few days had been incredibly boring in his opinion and he wanted to do something soon.

As Yuu exited his room he nearly bumped into Yoichi who had been standing right outside the door, prepared to knock on it.

“Calm down, Yuu-kun! Shinoa-san said it wasn’t that important!” he exclaimed, trying to calm Yuu down.

“Who knows if there’s a vampire out there or something!” Yuu spilled out his thoughts.

Yoichi couldn’t hold back a small smile at Yuu’s stupidity. He should’ve known that one was coming. Yuu still did like to take action and get stronger.

But Yoichi didn’t have time to stand around and think about Yuu’s thought-patterns. Yuu was already running towards the entrance of the building where Shinoa, Mitsuba and Kimizuki were already waiting for them. Yoichi had to follow if he didn’t want to arrive too late.

“You’re slow!” Kimizuki yelled as Yuu exited the building with Yoichi right behind him.

“Well excuse me for waking up late!” Yuu exclaimed.

“Have you ever heard of the thing called an alarm clock?” Kimizuki asked.

“Whatever, they’re not very useful,” Yuu said.

“Kimizuki-san could be Yuu-san’s alarm clock,” Shinoa suggested to Mitsuba in a hushed voice. However, both Yuu and Kimizuki picked up on her words and turned to her.

“THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN!” They both yelled at her.

“Fine, fine,” Shinoa said while waving her hands in front of her with an angelic smile. “Anyways, we have to start our patrol soon, so we need to hurry,” she started leading the way to where they were supposed to patrol and everyone got busy following. Yuu and Kimizuki were still glaring daggers at each other and Yoichi was watching them carefully in case they started an argument that he would have to stop.

* * *

 

Once they reached the area where they were to patrol, Shinoa stopped them all and turned around to face them.

“This is not one of the most important missions, it is simply routine. That doesn’t mean we can fool around as we please though. We need to take it seriously, like when you take out the garbage,” she said.

“How does those two have anything to do with each other?” Yuu asked.

“Both are duties you don’t really want to do, but have to,” Kimizuki explained irritated.

Yuu shook his head. He wasn’t entirely sure that he actually got that but whatever. He just hoped that something interesting would happen out here.

“Where are we supposed to go?” Mitsuba asked.

“I think we are supposed to just walk around the area, so let’s go to the right,” Shinoa said before leading the way in the direction she had given. Everyone else followed.

The area was deserted. Aside from the five members of Shinoa’s squad, they didn’t see anyone else. No human, no vampire, not even another creature. The area had once been a part of Tokyo and you could still see the streets clearly but a few buildings had long since burnt out and others had collapsed. Only a handful was left standing. In an area like this, it was clear that the catastrophe had happened. It was an area where you would expect more than just five teens to be at.

“I’m getting bored!” Yuu suddenly exclaimed after an hour of just walking around with nothing happening at all.

“Then, why don’t I tell you guys about a story I heard from the higher ups?” Shinoa asked.

“What kind of story is that?” Yoichi asked.

“It’s about this area,” Shinoa said. “I heard that there is actually an underground spell organization hiding around here. It is said that they are trying to find a way to turn the time back to before the catastrophe and plan on preventing it. No one knows for how long they have been at this, but I’d guess it has been a while,” Shinoa smiled.

“Have they succeeded?” Yuu asked.

“Idiot, what do you think?” Kimizuki snapped.

“No,” Shinoa said. “But they should still be at it and be about to come up with some useful results, but no one knows. No one has contact with them because they are very strict about not getting involved with the rest of us, the Imperial Demon Army and such.”

“I wonder what they think they’ve found,” Yuu muttered. “Think we could help them if we found them?” he asked.

“Stupid idea,” Kimizuki argued.

“I was just thinking out loud! Why do you think it’s stupid?” Yuu asked.

“Because it came out of your mouth,” Kimizuki answered with a smirk, knowing he was provoking Yuu.

“So if it came from someone else you’d buy it?” Yuu asked.

“Maybe?” Kimizuki answered, still smirking.

“Then why dismiss it just because it’s mine?” Yuu asked.

“Because you’re stupid, and your ideas are stupid too,” Kimizuki said.

Yuu turned around as he was standing face to face with the pink-haired and glaring into his eyes. “Just because I’m stupid it doesn’t mean my ideas are stupid!” Yuu yelled.

“What? Did you just admit that you’re stupid?” Kimizuki asked.

“I did not!” Yuu yelled into Kimizuki’s face.

“Get out of my face,” Kimizuki said coldly. “Your stupidity might infect me.”

“Calm down, you two!” Yoichi walked up to them and prepared to step in between them but he couldn’t really push them apart.

This was when a bright light opened under the three boys’ feet and all stopped with whatever they were doing to see what was happening around them. Shinoa and Mitsuba were standing outside the light and looked surprised at their three friends without being able to figure out what was going on or what they were supposed to do.

Before anyone got the time to figure out anything useful, the light surrounded Yuu, Yoichi and Kimizuki and became so bright they couldn’t even see each other.

The next thing Yuu saw was a completely unfamiliar room. It was huge and there was some kind of net in the middle, not completely separating the two parts of the room. There was a stage in one end and it was brightly lit by lamps in the ceiling.

“What… what happened?” Yuu asked while looking around at the place which didn’t look like a place he thought he was supposed to know.

“That’s what I would like to know,” an unfamiliar voice said.


	2. New World

School had only just barely finished but Kageyama was already in the gym attempting to improve his serves. Originally he’d wanted to perfect his tosses too, but he couldn’t do that without anyone putting the ball in play first.

It was while he was serving that the door opened and Daichi, Sugawara and Asahi entered the gym. Normally they were among the last to arrive because they walked from the main building and to the gym in their own pace unlike some first years who always hurried to practice. Well, one of those hadn’t shown up yet.

“Where’s Hinata?” Sugawara asked after looking around and confirming that the short middle blocker wasn’t anywhere around.

“How would I know?” Kageyama asked. He turned to face his seniors as he spoke.

“Kageyama, don’t you want to practice tossing some more?” Asahi asked. “I could serve,” he suggested.

Kageyama nodded and Asahi walked up to him and was handed the ball. Kageyama then went to the other side of the net to do a toss from over there. He would just have to toss it back to Asahi as he could catch it somehow.

But Asahi screwed up the serve a little bit and Kageyama, who had only thought he would need to make the toss, was unable to catch the ball. He watched out of the corner of his eye as the ball headed towards the floor and then someone received it and sent it up above Kageyama who made the toss and sent the ball back to Asahi. He then looked to the one who had received.

“You’ve done better, Asahi-san,” Nishinoya yelled.

“I thought so,” Asahi said. “That was a mistake, sorry Kageyama,” he said.

“Don’t mind…” Kageyama muttered.

“You slipped a bit up too, Kageyama,” Sugawara said as he walked on the court.

Kageyama sent Sugawara a slightly confused look, not getting where he had gone wrong.

“You delivered the toss fine, but your timing and way of handling the ball was a little off, probably because it looked like it was gonna drop,” Sugawara explained and showed Kageyama where he’d gone wrong. Nishinoya came up to them and watched as Sugawara was explaining.

“What’s all this about?” Tanaka now also entered the gym and noticed how Nishinoya, Sugawara and Kageyama were all standing together and talking.

“I think they are trying to learn from each other,” Daichi answered.

“It’s rare for Suga to be able to teach Kageyama something,” Asahi said as he walked up to Daichi and Tanaka.

It was then a white light appeared under Sugawara, Nishinoya and Kageyama and they all looked confused as it appeared.

“What-“ Sugawara started, but before he could finish his question, the white light surrounded them and blinded their vision completely. When they could see again, the scenery had completely changed from the gym they had been in a few seconds ago.

“Yuu-san!” they heard a girl exclaim as all three boys blinked and they now became more aware of their surroundings.

They were standing in the middle of a street. There had once been buildings on either side, but now most had either burnt or collapsed. Only a few were still standing. The buildings that were closest had collapsed though.

In front of them, in the middle of the street, two girls were standing and staring at them with wide eyes. One of them had blonde pigtails and violet eyes. She was standing slightly behind a shorter girl with ashen violet hair, tied back in a purple bow.

“Who is Yuu-san?” Sugawara asked.

The ashen-haired girl blinked and then seemed to collect herself. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t seem like he’s here now. Who are you?” she asked.

“What happened here?” Kageyama asked.

“Where is here?” Nishinoya asked.

“We should answer their question since they asked first,” Sugawara said, calmly. “I’m Sugawara Koushi,” he introduced himself. “The black-haired guy is Kageyama Tobio, and the shorter guy is Nishinoya Yuu.”

“I’m Hiiragi Shinoa, and the girl behind me is Sanguu Mitsuba,” the ashen-haired girl introduced. “To answer Nishinoya-san’s question, this is Tokyo, as to what happened, a catastrophe,” she said.

“When did this happen?” Sugawara asked, not being able to recall that a catastrophe of this scale had happened in Tokyo recently. He highly doubted the other could recall that either.

“It happened around eight years ago,” Mitsuba said.

“But we were in Tokyo recently,” Kageyama said in a confused manner. He looked around again as if trying to look for something he would recognize.

Sugawara had already gone way past that. If this was Tokyo, it was certainly far from the Tokyo that they knew, which meant that this was either far into the future or an entirely different dimension.

“This is a bit of a stupid question, but what year is this exactly?” Sugawara asked.

“2020,” Shinoa answered.

“Then, what kind of catastrophe are we talking about?” Sugawara asked.

“Shinoa, don’t tell me that those guys don’t know where they are, what time or the situation,” Mitsuba whispered loudly to Shinoa.

“Sorry Mi-chan, but that does look to be the case,” Shinoa said. “Let’s finish patrolling and pray that we don’t get attacked. If we do, we’re probably all gonna die.”

“Are you serious?” Nishinoya asked.

“Keep your voices down,” Sugawara whispered loudly to both Kageyama and Nishinoya.

Kageyama nodded without saying a word, but Nishinoya looked very unwilling to do that.

“Don’t worry so much,” Shinoa said. “If it’s just a fourth horseman, Mi-chan and I can hold it off while you run, you just can’t get in our way. It’s only if we are found by a vampire that we’re doomed,” she smiled.

“That’s… somewhat reassuring,” Sugawara answered while trying to smile. Kageyama and Nishinoya couldn’t really say that they felt at ease either. In the world where they came from a vampire could only be found in stories and myths. They weren’t even sure what a fourth horseman was supposed to be. Regardless, these girls seemed very familiar with both terms.

“Can someone tell me how we ended up here again?” Nishinoya asked as the three boys followed behind the girls on their patrol.

“There was that white light… then we were here I think,” Kageyama said thoughtfully.

“That’s all I recall too, what about you, Suga-san?” Nishinoya asked.

Sugawara thought. “I can’t recall anything other than that either,” he said.

“But what triggered it?” Kageyama asked.

“I’d rather know how we get back,” Nishinoya said.

“We’d all like to know that,” Sugawara said as they continued on following Shinoa and Mitsuba in this new, strange, broken world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wonder if this went good or bad. I haven't written anything for Haikyuu before, but isn't it a first time for everything? Anyways, you're VERY welcome to tell me how it went.   
> Thank you for reading
> 
> Jackie


	3. Strange

“What… what happened?” Yuu asked while looking around at the place which didn’t look like a place he thought he was supposed to know.

“That’s what I would like to know,” an unfamiliar voice said.

Yuu, Yoichi and Kimizuki all looked to the entrance of the room where three boys were standing and staring at them. Two had their eyes widely open while the one in the middle looked completely calm, almost like he was used to seeing strangers suddenly appearing in this room.

“Are you the ones behind this?” Kimizuki asked

“No questioning! They are!” Yuu yelled, pointing at them.

“Calm down, Yuu-kun,” Yoichi said while attempting to force Yuu’s pointing hand down.

“Send us back!” Yuu yelled at the three strangers.

“We are not the ones behind this,” the calm one of the three others said. “Three of our friends were just standing where you stand now and they have disappeared completely. If we knew how to undo this, we would,” he said in a reassuring tone.

“Then… we came here in place of someone else?” Yoichi asked.

“That’s my guess,” the calm one said.

“So… We replaced someone else and no one knows how to undo this,” Yuu summed up, attempting to see if he’d got it right.

“If this is going to be more permanent, then shouldn’t we learn their names?” the taller one of the three unknown asked the calm one.

“We should” the calm one said. “So, what are your names?” this was spoken in a demanding tone that made him seem more like an authority. He watched them closely while awaiting their reply. There was something in his attitude that made Yuu react right away.

“Hyakuya Yuuichiro!” he exclaimed.

“Saotome Yoichi!” Yoichi followed up.

“I’m Kimizuki Shiho,” Kimizuki finalized in a much more calm voice.

“I’m Daichi,” the calm guy said. “The guy over there is Tanaka,” at these words he pointed to a guy with really short hair who was now studying them closely. “This guy is Asahi,” the gestured towards the tall guy at his other side.

“Shouldn’t we introduce by full names?” Asahi asked.

“I don’t think that’s relevant,” Daichi answered.

“KAGEYAMA!!!” A voice was suddenly heard and some small guy with red hair ran past the three from this place and up to the three new ones. He stopped right in front of Kimizuki. “Why are you here first?” he asked.

“Who’s Kageyama?” Kimizuki asked, feeling slightly amused.

“What? Have you got amnesia or something?” the red-haired asked.

“Kageyama is one of those you swapped places with,” Daichi explained.

“What are you talking about, Kageyama’s right there!” the red-haired yelled in frustration while pointing to Kimizuki.

Yuu laughed. “How can Kimizuki look so much like someone else that he would be mistaken for being them?” he asked.

“If I’d have to say anything he looks more like Tsukishima than Kageyama,” Tanaka said.

“Who looks like Tsukki?” Two new ones entered, one with green hair and someone who was tall, but aside from that and the blonde hair color, actually looked like Kimizuki.

Yuu stared from one to the other and then looked to Yoichi. “I really wanna go back now,” he said.

Yoichi didn’t answer. He was in deep thoughts, trying to put the pieces together and figure out what was going on now, why the red-haired was calling Kimizuki by the name of one of those they had swapped place with.

“Yuu-kun,” he said. “Do you think it’s possible that we have taken the appearance of one of those we swapped places with?” he asked.

“We look like we normally do, don’t we?” Yuu asked back.

“It looks like it…” Yoichi answered.

“It’s very likely that you do look like them somehow,” Daichi had walked up to them and stood with them now.

“But Kimizuki-kun looks like that tall guy… Tsukishima? Just as Tanaka-san said,” Yoichi argued.

“I think it’s just like this in the cases of the three of you, and the three of us who saw it happen.” Daichi said while looking around the room. Three more just entered so they were now 12 in total.

“So… to everyone else we look like the ones we swapped places with?” Yoichi asked.

“Hinata,” Daichi spoke to the short red-haired boy. “Who does this look like?” he held his hand above Yuu’s head as he asked the question.

“Sugawara-senpai,” Hinata answered without thinking.

“And this one?” Daichi moved his hand above Yoichi’s head.

“Noya-senpai,” HInata answered.

“Who is that?” Yoichi asked confused.

“And who’s that Su… Su… Sugizawa guy?” Yuu asked.

“Either clear out your ears or adjust your short-term memory, idiot,” Kimizuki said irritated.

“Kageyama, why are you calling Sugawara-senpai an idiot?” Hinata, the red-head, asked.

“You’re an idiot too,” Kimizuki said.

“If you want to fill out your role you should perhaps use ‘dumbass’ instead of ‘idiot’,” the Kimizuki-copy said. He had now also walked up to them with his green-haired companion.

“This is creepy,” Yuu declared. “You two even seem alike!”

Yoichi smiled at this. He agreed with Yuu, but the more idiotic one had made it sound like an insult, so he didn’t want to voice his agreement and make an enemy out of the Kimizuki-copy.

“So, what’s your name?” Kimizuki asked the tall guy.

“Tsukishima Kei,” the other said.

“Kimizuki Shiho,” Kimizuki said.

“Their names even have a kanji in common…” Yoichi muttered, finding it almost scary how similar Kimizuki and Tsukishima were.

“You’re right,” Kimizuki said, looking to Tsukishima. “If we look like someone we are not, perhaps we should learn to act like them to fill the gap,”

“Then… how do we start?” Yoichi asked. “How do we learn?”

“You have us!” Tanaka came up to them and wrapped an arm around Yoichi’s shoulders. “We’ll help you learn all you need to know and take the role,” he said.

“Act as someone else for a little while should be easy enough. I mean, what could happen that we couldn’t solve somehow?” Yuu asked.

Just as he said this, a person stopped in the doorway and looked at them while panting. Everyone turned their attention towards him as he entered.

“What is it, Takeda-sensei?” Daichi asked.

“I…” the new guy panted, “I arranged a practice game between us and Aoba Jousai at Saturday in two weeks,”

“Game?” Yuu asked.

“Yuu-kun, now’s not the time to be oblivious,” Yoichi whispered.

“In two weeks?” Daichi asked while only looking at the new guy. Everyone else looked between the guy and the three whom they had now learned were replacing someone they knew.

“Yes,” the guy said.

“Against Seijou?” Daichi asked.

“Yes,” the guy answered again.

Daichi forced on a smile and nodded. “Thank you, Takeda-sensei,” he said.

Somehow, Yuu got the impression that whatever was going to happen in two weeks would end up really badly if they didn’t swap back before then. He didn’t mind if something interesting happened, but this may just have been a little too much, even for him.


	4. Mirror Image

They had been walking for around half an hour, always turning the same way whenever they decided to change direction. Sugawara, Shinoa and Mitsuba had all realized that they would soon end up in the same place as where the white light had appeared. Kageyama hadn’t and Nishinoya didn’t seem to have either, or maybe he had but wasn’t thinking about it.

“Did it rain recently?” Nishinoya suddenly asked the girls who were still walking ahead.

“It was raining heavily until this morning,” Shinoa answered.

“Why do you ask?” Mitsuba asked while looking over her shoulder.

“I just thought… I’d like to find a large puddle,” Nishinoya answered.

“Why?” Kageyama asked.

“Did you notice something?” Sugawara asked.

Nishinoya seemed to think. “Maybe,” he answered.

“There’s a deep puddle over there,” Shinoa said while directing their attention towards one of the buildings. Half of it had collapsed but the other looked like nothing had happened. It looked like one half had suffered from the catastrophe and the other had been some other place entirely.

“Let’s go then,” Nishinoya dragged both Sugawara and Kageyama along to the puddle Shinoa had pointed out. The two girls followed close behind them. They were both curious as to know what Nishinoya would need a puddle for.

Nishinoya stopped right in front of the puddle. It was slightly dark but it did show their reflections. He looked to Sugawara and Kageyama.

“By chance I noticed my reflection in one puddle, but it wasn’t that deep, so at first I thought I’d got it wrong, but it kept happening. I thought someone was tailing us, but that’s not likely… I think,” he said while studying his own reflection in the puddle.

“What are you talking about, Nishinoya?” Sugawara asked.

Kageyama took a step forward and looked down at his mirror image. He immediately started glaring at it, like he was seeing something he really didn’t want to see.

“Why do I look like that guy?” he asked.

“Who?” Sugawara asked.

“Look,” Nishinoya said. “His reflection looks like Tsukishima!”

Sugawara took a step forward and then caught sight of not only Kageyama’s reflection, but also his own and Nishinoya’s. They didn’t look anything like themselves. Shinoa’s reflection looked normal though. This became visible as she walked up to stand beside them. Mitsuba followed.

“I see,” Shinoa said. “So Kageyama-san is Kimizuki-san, Nishinoya-san is Yoichi-san and Sugawara-san is Yuu-san,” she summarized.

“Are those the guys we swapped place with?” Kageyama asked while studying Kimizuki’s face in the reflection.

“Yes,” Shinoa answered. “I’m not entirely sure what this means though,” she was referring to the fact that the original mirror images were still in this world.

“I think it is to show how others may see them,” Mitsuba took a guess. “So… to anyone but us and them, they look like Yuu, Yoichi and Kimizuki.”

“I love that Mi-chan can actually be smart,” Shinoa said while smiling.

“Go away,” Mitsuba turned half away from Shinoa.

“Then… if we appear like this… do we have to act like them too?” Nishinoya asked, thoughtfully.

“That would be my guess,” Sugawara answered. “The case is complicated. I would rather not get in trouble over this.”

“True,” Shinoa said. “But either way, I doubt you can avoid trouble. If you don’t act like Yuu-san you will of course get into trouble, but Yuu-san is the one of us who gets into the most of trouble. He is always first to pick a fight, always first to question orders and always the loudest.”

“Well…” Sugawara said. “That’s three things that doesn’t exactly describe me…”

“And he doesn’t think before acting,” Mitsuba said.

“If this was a manga series, he would, sadly, be the perfect protagonist,” Shinoa said.

“If this was a manga series I would be in the supporting cast,” Sugawara said, making it only more clear how different he was from Yuu.

“So how is this… Yoichi?” Nishinoya asked. “Is he loud?”

“Actually, not really,” Shinoa said. “He is smarter than Yuu-san, he is calm at most points. He is not that loud and probably a bit more to the supporting cast side,” she said.

“He doesn’t sound that bad,” Sugawara commented.

“He doesn’t sound that interesting,” Nishinoya said, causing Sugawara to feel slightly offended. “Isn’t there anything interesting about him?” he asked.

“I think he wants to take revenge because a vampire killed his older sister,” Shinoa answered.

“And that… Tsukishima-looking guy?” Kageyama asked.

“Kimizuki-san?” Shinoa asked. “Smart, skilled, impatient, he often provokes people and he and Yuu-san doesn’t get along very well.” She explained.

“Basically, act like Tsukishima and you should be fine, Kageyama,” Sugawara said.

“Except you two have to not get along,” Nishinoya said.

“Why don’t they get along though?” Sugawara asked, looking between Mitsuba and Shinoa.

“You answer that,” Mitsuba said while looking at Shinoa.

“Well…” Shinoa smirked. “First off, because Kimizuki-san beat up Yuu-san on their first meeting and then the connection was ruined. Yuu-san provoked Kimizuki-san afterwards and then Kimizuki-san grabbed every chance to mock Yuu-san afterwards,” She explained.

“How so?” Kageyama asked.

“Yuu-san’s not that smart. I remember one particular time when they had to take a test and he failed. Kimizuki-san didn’t only mock him because he scored zero points but also because all his answers were written in hiragana-“ Shinoa interrupted herself as she saw a horrified look appear on Sugawara’s face. “Something wrong, Sugawara-san?” she asked politely.

“No… I just realize that depending on how long this lasts my entire education might be screwed,” Sugawara answered with a very forced smile on his face.

“At least there’s hope that mine and Kageyama’s grades will get better,” Nishinoya said, trying to be optimistic. Of course it didn’t help Sugawara in any way.

“It’s different for you. You two still have one or two years to fix your grades,” Sugawara said. “If I score zero points in a test and start writing the answers in hiragana only, then I’ll not only be moved from the advanced class but also be prevented from playing volleyball.”

Nishinoya thought about that but it was Kageyama who broke the silence first. “Then… can’t we just try to get back?”

“How?” Sugawara asked.

“We’ll figure that out,” Shinoa said. “We are also in trouble as long as you three are here, since Yuu-san, Yoichi-san and Kimizuki-san are the stronger ones.”

“Can we do it?” Mitsuba asked.

“I’m pretty sure the problem is on this side,” Shinoa answered. “We are the only ones who can do it. We just have to hope that nothing happens in the meantime.”

As if on cue, the sound of loud, heavy steps was heard as something approached quickly. All five of them noticed how a shadow fell over them and Sugawara, Kageyama and Nishinoya all turned around as they could see whatever it was.

“What… is that?” Nishinoya asked while staring.

“It’s a fourth horseman of John,” Shinoa answered. The timing really couldn’t have been worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the comment   
> Thanks for reading 
> 
> Jackie ^_^


	5. Difference

“What is Volleyball?” They were sitting in what Hinata had told them was the club room. Yuu didn’t know for what club, but he thought he’d figure it out. Perhaps a ‘Volleyball club’? Daichi had asked the question before, but Yuu wanted to turn it back at him.

“I don’t know,” Yoichi said. “Some… specific type of ball?”

“That’s my best guess,” Kimizuki said. Yuu said nothing.

“Volleyball or Volley, in more Japanese term, Haikyuu, is a sport where you-“ Daichi started, but Yuu cut him off suddenly.

“Isn’t it poetry?” he interrupted.

The room fell completely silent. Most were silent because they couldn’t believe that something so stupid could come out of the mouth of someone who was normally so smart. Tanaka and Asahi just wondered how anyone could say something this stupid, Kimizuki and Yoichi were silent, knowing perfectly well that Yuu had gotten himself into trouble and neither of them wanted to interrupt. Daichi was silent for several reasons, most of them were similar to the others’ but not much.

Luckily for Yuu, Daichi decided that explaining everything was more important than punishment, for the time being, and he therefore started over with his explanation.

“Volleyball or volley is a sport where you throw a ball from one side of the net to the other. The point is that the ball mustn’t touch the ground on your half. If it does, the other team score. If you manage to have the ball touch the floor on the other half of the court, you score.”

“Ah!” Yuu suddenly exclaimed. “Guren told me about that! But he also says that it’s not played anymore. So why are you playing?” he asked.

“Because this is not our world,” Kimizuki snapped.

“I know that!” Yuu exclaimed, irritated.

“You don’t seem like you understand it,” Kimizuki said. “Do we have to repeat it to get it through your thick skull?” his voice also hinted of his irritation.

“I said I get it!” Yuu yelled.

“Calm down you two,” Yoichi said while making his way around Yuu as he could sit down between him and Kimizuki, signaling that the fight was over.

“It’s weird to see them act so differently from their usual selves,” Ennoshita commented.

“It might actually be a huge problem if they barely even know what volleyball is,” Daichi said.

“It can’t be that bad,” Yuu said, calmly.

“You three are to act as key players,” Daichi said. “Saotome has to become good at receiving, better than any of us, actually, and you, Hyakuya and Kimizuki, have to learn everything there is to learn about tossing and being a setter.”

Yuu and Kimizuki looked at each other while glaring.

“And learn to get along as senpai and kouhai too,” Tanaka added.

“Who’s what?” Kimizuki asked.

“I’m senpai,” Yuu said.

“He’s actually right about that,” Daichi confirmed. “Hyakuya has taken Suga’s appearance, he’s a third year student. Kimizuki is Kageyama, a first year student. Saotome looks like Nishinoya who is a second year student,”

“Excuse me,” Yoichi spoke up. “But… could you please not refer to me and Yuu-kun by surname, it’s really weird. We’re not very used to it,”

“So you’ll be Yoichi and Hyakuya will be Yuuichiro?” Asahi asked.

“Actually, call me Yuu,” Yuu said. “Everyone does that anyway,” he smiled.

“I have a question,” Kimizuki said. “Do we need to cover for them at school as well?”

“That would be best,” Daichi answered.

“Then, how smart is this Sugawara?” Kimizuki asked.

“He’s in advanced class, His grades are pretty good too,” Daichi answered.

“What would happen if he failed all his tests, or better yet, failed and wrote the answers in hiragana only?” Kimizuki asked.

“Why’re you bringing that up now?!” Yuu exclaimed irritated.

“Is he dumber than me?” Hinata asked in disbelief.

“I’m not!” Yuu protested.

“We can have you take a test and find out,” Daichi said. “I’d also like to know how bad it is.” As he spoke, he went to find two sheets of paper. He wrote on them quickly and then handed the papers, along with a pen to Hinata and Yuu.

“It’s three questions and you have 15 minutes to answer them. It shouldn’t be difficult,” he said.

The time started and Yuu and Hinata bent over their papers to write the answers to the three questions. The questions were of three different subjects. There was one question in modern Japanese, one in mathematics and one in English.

When time was up, Daichi and Ennoshita accepted the sheets of paper and checked the answers to the three questions. Ennoshita had gotten Hinata’s paper while Daichi had got Yuu’s paper. Neither of them took long to finish, but whereas Ennoshita was looking pretty satisfied with Hinata’s answers, Daichi looked pretty gloomy as he looked up at Yuu.

“How did Hinata do?” he asked without looking at Ennoshita.

“Not bad,” Ennoshita said. “His Japanese could have been done better, he made a small miscalculation and there were minor errors in his translation.” He explained.

Hinata pouted at this, but he wasn’t completely unsatisfied.

“How did I do?” Yuu asked.

“I’m not even sure you understood the Japanese question, if I had any doubt you couldn’t calculate it’s gone now, you really can’t. As for the English, imitating the sounds in hiragana is not gonna cut it,” Daichi answered.

Both Kimizuki and Yoichi chuckled at this, only half-heartedly trying to keep it in. Also Yamaguchi and Tsukishima had trouble keeping in laughter.

“What do we do about it then?” Asahi asked, worriedly. “If that’s all he can do, how is Suga even gonna get a single question right in the upcoming test?”

Daichi looked to think that one through for a bit. “He will stay with me every hour, every day. I’ll have him come live at my place for as long as it takes until the problem is fixed. He will study hard, all subjects and volleyball.”

“Why am I suddenly missing Shinoa and Guren?” Yuu muttered.

“Yoichi needs help too, to become louder and less of a peace-maker,” Daichi said.

Everyone fell silent as they looked around for someone who could help Yoichi to act more like Nishinoya.

“Maybe… My sister could help, if you don’t mind me letting her know,” Tanaka answered after a little while of silence.

“That’ll be fine,” Daichi said. “Then, who can teach Kimizuki to become Kageyama?”

“I’m sure I can manage,” Kimizuki said, confidently.

“Kageyama couldn’t,” Hinata said.

“You take care of him,” Daichi said while looking at Hinata.

“I don’t want to be associated with him!” Hinata exclaimed.

“Likewise,” Kimizuki answered.

“You’re the only idiot available” Daichi said.

There was something in the tone Daichi used that made it clear that this was the final say on the matter. He didn’t want to hear any more objections. Now Yuu wasn’t the only one who wanted to go home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the thing about Haikyuu/Volleyball is actually something I picked up in Binan Koukou Chikyuu boueibu LOVE! LOVE! and I figure it's probably true. That Yuu mistakes it as Haiku is just something I figured he would do. Like the fact that he would probably be dumber than Hinata.   
> I was actually considering making Yuu smarter than him, but that would be boring. Not only would it throw the confidence level out of balance but it would also make no sense since Hinata has gone to school for 10 years and Yuu hasn't really gone to school at all. Also, if we need to put some people in trouble, we may as well go all in.   
> Anyways, thanks for reading
> 
> Jackie


	6. Unarmed

The three boys and two girls were all staring at the creature Shinoa had called a fourth horseman of john. It was huge, towering above them. Neither Sugawara, Nishinoya nor Kageyama thought they’d ever seen anything like it. Maybe they were actually lucky for that.

“What do we do?” Nishinoya asked while staring.

“Exactly as we told you to do,” Shinoa grabbed a small black key and held it between her fingers. “You run and hide somewhere and let me and Mi-chan take care of everything here,” she said.

“It doesn’t seem right to let you do all the hard work though,” Sugawara said, even though he knew he was out of his comfort zone in this situation.

“What would you do?” Mitsuba asked. “You can’t defend yourselves so you’d just get in our way if you stuck around.”

“She’s right,” Shinoa said. “Get going, now!”

The creature struck down in an attempt to attack. Its aim was at Shinoa but she yelled something and a scythe appeared in her hand. A giant battle axe appeared in Mitsuba’s hand. This assured the three boys that the girls could handle the situation fine.

“Let’s go,” Sugawara said before heading off towards the half of the building they were standing by that was still intact.

“What’ll we do in here?” Nishinoya asked while he and Kageyama followed Sugawara’s lead.

“Do as they told us and hide,” Sugawara said.

“Wait a minute,” Kageyama suddenly stopped and looked a bit further down the street. “Isn’t that the spot where we appeared?” he asked.

Sugawara and Nishinoya stopped too and both looked in the same direction as Kageyama. Sugawara recognized it as well.

“It is,” he said.

“Do you think we could use it to get back?” Nishinoya asked while staring at the spot as if he feared it would go away if he took his eyes off it.

Sugawara thought about that, not trusting the others to decide whether they should try out the theory or not. It didn’t take him long once he heard the sound of something hitting something hard and Shinoa yelling something.

“Let’s give it a try,” he said before he headed towards the spot. Nishinoya and Kageyama followed and when they reached the spot where they had all appeared, they stopped.

“Do we try standing like then?” Kageyama said.

“That’s a good idea!” Nishinoya declared. He didn’t remember how they had been standing when they appeared in this world though. Sugawara didn’t remember it precisely either so Kageyama had to instruct them as best as he could recall.

“What are you doing!” Shinoa landed no more than 100 meter away from where they were standing. Mitsuba landed a little ahead of her as the fourth horseman came out on the street.

“We were trying to swap back,” Nishinoya said.

“Don’t think of that now! Just run!” Shinoa yelled.

But the creature had noticed the three defenseless boys and was now attempting to attack them. Instinctively, they all moved as quickly as they could, throwing themselves away from the spot. Sugawara fell to the ground and rolled around twice before hitting a rock. While falling, he had grabbed a hold of something long and thin. Upon closer inspection, it looked to be a sword.

Shinoa and Mitsuba now seemed to be doing better against the creature. It looked like they were actually winning.

“Final blow, Mi-chan!” Shinoa yelled while swinging out her scythe. Mitsuba jumped from the ground, up on the scythe before jumping up above the fourth horseman and swinging down her axe, splitting its upper half in two. She then landed on the ground, next to Shinoa and used the axe to cover herself from the blood splatter. Shinoa used her scythe for the same purpose.

“That’s pretty cool,” Nishinoya said as he walked up to Sugawara. He too had rolled away from where they’d been standing earlier and now he held a bow in his hand, though he didn’t seem to be aware of it.

“Nishinoya…” Sugawara wasn’t entirely sure if he should say something about the bow as he sat up with the sword in his lap.

“Seems you found the equipment you’re missing,” Shinoa said, stopping in front of Sugawara and Nishinoya. Mitsuba stood beside her and Kageyama was coming over, carrying another object. It looked like two swords.

“The equipment?” Sugawara asked. “You mean this?” he held up the sword.

“That’s Yuu’s!” Mitsuba exclaimed.

“I wanted the sword! It’s gotta be really cool!” Nishinoya exclaimed.

“You have a bow there,” Sugawara said.

“What’s this?” Kageyama asked while looking at the weapon he had found.

“I think they’re called twin swords,” Shinoa said while looking at Kageyama’s weapon. “It’s called Kiseki Ou and belongs to Kimizuki-san, so you’ve got your right equipment too,” she said.

“What about this? This belong to that… other guy?” Nishinoya asked.

“Yoichi-san?” Shinoa asked. “Yes, it’s his.”

“Damn it! Then I’m stuck with this! I was hoping he had something cool like a sword!” Nishinoya complained loudly.

“Is it possible for us to swap weapons?” Sugawara said. “I’d honestly rather have the bow than the sword myself,” he explained.

“That’s not possible,” Shinoa said. “First off, it would be weird if Yuu-san started carrying Yoichi-san’s bow and vice versa. The second reason is that each weapon is possessed by a demon. Why it is not attacking you mentally I don’t know, but I’m not about to risk it happening if you swap weapons. I would actually rather that you don’t even think about touching any other weapon than your own while you’re here.” She finalized.

“What’ll happen if we do?” Kageyama asked.

“I can’t say for sure,” Shinoa asked. “Best case scenario is that nothing happens, but that’s as unlikely as this world repairing itself. Worst case scenario might be that you die, one way or another, or get possessed, but that’ll mean we will have to kill you,” she looked a little sorrowful as she said this.

“You don’t want that,” Sugawara guessed.

“Of course not,” Shinoa answered. “We could risk that either of our friends couldn’t come back and that would be very problematic,” she said.

“How much can you die from in this world?” Nishinoya asked.

“A lot,” Shinoa said. “But there are people here who live a life very similar to what you’re used to. They go to school and let the demon army protect them. To them, it is almost like the catastrophe never happened. All they need to fear is when we screw up, like when a captured vampire breaks free and such,” she explained.

“That’d be problematic,” Mitsuba commented drily.

“I hate to admit it, but that life doesn’t sound half bad,” Nishinoya said.

“You won’t get a taste of that,” Shinoa said. “We still have about an hour left of our patrol. Once that is over with, we have other things we need to attend to, like instructing you three how to live in this world and be on your own,”

“Can’t you be with us?” Kageyama asked.

“Mi-chan and me?!” Shinoa asked in disbelief. “We are girls, you are boys! We stay separately!”

“Do we stay together at least?” Sugawara asked.

“Do they?” Shinoa looked to Mitsuba.

“How’d I know?” Mitsuba asked. “I think they live in the same building, but I’m not sure,” she said after thinking.

“We’ll figure that out.” Shinoa said. “For now, you just come to mine and Mi-chan’s rooms and we’ll answer all your questions and figure out a way to solve this problem, after we finish our work that is,” she said before heading down the road and turning left. Mitsuba, Sugawara, Nishinoya and Kageyama all got busy following her.


	7. Challenge

The first day of what Yoichi and Kimizuki had called real school, had been tough. Yuu had been studying as hard as he possibly could with Daichi watching over him for hours on the day before. It had all been in preparation for today’s classes, but Yuu still didn’t understand a thing.

“You just listen closely and make whatever you can out of it,” Daichi had said while they were heading to school together.

That was easier said than done. The teachers were going really fast over whatever they were talking about. Once Yuu thought he was about to understand something, the teacher would change the subject completely and he would feel off again.

“I don’t get it!” Yuu yelled once Daichi had dragged him off to the gym during lunch break. This was the only place they could be sure no one would overhear their conversations and the only place Yuu could step out of character and be himself. Daichi thought he would need that.

“What don’t you get?” Daichi asked.

“Everything!” Yuu exclaimed. “I can’t keep up at all!”

Daichi couldn’t say he hadn’t expected that to happen, but it couldn’t really be helped. They were expected to be able to keep up with the fast pace in the class. For a person as stupid as Yuu it would be very difficult without a doubt.

“Do you remember what I taught you last night?” he asked.

“We haven’t been over any of it yet!” Yuu exclaimed.

“That’ll be in the class right after this,” Daichi said. “Tell me what it’s about,” He could sense how he had to be very patient with this guy. He was still a bit of a child, especially in the way he tended to react when there was something he didn’t want to do and didn’t understand. He would get it someday soon, or at least Daichi hoped so.

* * *

 

But Yuu still didn’t feel like he had learned anything as classes ended that afternoon. His head was hurting from all the blabbering the teachers had been doing. He was wondering if they even spoke Japanese in this world.

“How did school go, Yuu-kun?” Yoichi asked once Yuu entered the gym, feeling like his head was about to explode.

“Horribly,” Yuu answered.

Yoichi smiled. “I think I managed fine. No one really seem to have high expectations from me anyway,” he said. Then he looked to Kimizuki. “How was it for you, Kimizuki-kun?” he asked.

“Fine, I guess. But irritating,” Kimizuki answered.

“That’s what it’s like to be among idiots,” Tsukishima said.

“I’m around an idiot every day,” Kimizuki said while eying Yuu.

“Who’s an idiot!” Yuu exclaimed.

“Alright, we need to train a couple of setters before the coach gets here,” Daichi called out, claiming the attention of everyone.

“So we’re going to learn to play that… Porky-ball?” Yuu asked.

“I think it’s called volleyball,” Yoichi attempted to whisper in Yuu’s ear.

“I still can’t adjust to Suga letting so stupid words out of his mouth,” Asahi said.

“None of us can,” Daichi said.

“What’s that… setter?” Kimizuki asked, being the one to get the conversation back at the more important subject.

“The setter tosses the ball to the spiker,” Hinata explained.

“Oh, that’s what you were blabbering about yesterday,” Kimizuki said coldly.

“How does that work?” Yuu asked.

“You get the ball and like _Wush_ you get it to the spiker who slams it across the net like _Bam_!” Hinata explained while imitating what he meant. It didn’t work too well though.

“Where’s the dictionary?” Kimizuki wondered.

“I don’t get it either,” Yoichi answered. “Hinata-kun, could you be a little more specific?” he asked.

“You don’t get it?” Hinata asked in disbelief.

“We can’t exactly show you what a good toss is like because our best setters have been replaced,” Daichi said. “But we can give you an idea of how it’s done,” with that he looked to Asahi. “I’ll try the toss, you serve and spike,” he said.

Asahi nodded, though with a slightly unsure expression as he walked onto the court and prepared to serve. It didn’t go too well for him and Daichi showing what it was about, but Kimizuki got a faint idea. Yuu was as clueless as ever.

“I want to try,” Kimizuki said as the two older ones finished showing.

“You go ahead,” Daichi said. “Hinata, you spike!” he called.

“Really?” Hinata asked.

“Spiking looks more fun!” Yuu complained.

“You always liked attacking, Yuu-kun,” Yoichi said, smiling.

“Yoichi, I’ll show you how to receive, and Yuu, you are going to practice tossing at the other end of the court,” Daichi demanded.

“I don’t get it!” Yuu exclaimed. “What am I supposed to do?”

“That’s because it requires brain cells to do it, which is something you lack,” Kimizuki mocked. He was already in place and Hinata was standing next to him.

“What does a Tsukishima-like remark come out of Kageyama’s mouth?” Hinata wondered.

“I do!” Yuu was angry with Kimizuki’s insult.

“Well, Kageyama is kind of stupid but he is better than Suga,” Asahi said.

“Speaking of Kageyama and Sugawara-senpai, don’t they usually get along?” Tanaka asked.

“We’ll work with that next,” Daichi said. “Right now our primary focus is teaching them and Yoichi the basics of volleyball.”

The arrangements were made then. Yoichi was told how to hold his hands when receiving. He was watching Daichi closely as he received the first ball from the other side of the net.

“It’s off!” Hinata yelled.

“You try doing this!” Kimizuki said.

“How am I supposed to do it?” Yuu spoke loudly.

“Step under the ball and get it up with your fingertips!” Daichi yelled as he saw that Yuu was doing nothing but just standing in the middle of the court, watching the ball.

Yuu ran to where he thought the ball would be and raised his hands, hoping he was doing it right, but the ball flew over his head and hit the net behind him and Daichi started yelling at him.

“You’re doing it wrong!” he said. “Your hands are off” he showed how Yuu was supposed to hold his hands. Yuu tried imitating, but it didn’t work. Daichi had to manually put his hands in position and show him how the ball was supposed to feel by placing it on his fingertips.

“I feel like an idiot,” Yuu muttered.

“You are an idiot,” Kimizuki commented from the other side of the net.

“What’d you say, four-eyes?” Yuu asked. He turned around to look at Kimizuki, in the same move he dropped his hands to his sides and the ball fell to the floor. Daichi’s facial expression stiffened.

“I said you’re an idiot,” Kimizuki answered calmly.

“I’m not!” Yuu yelled at him.

“You are so dumb you can’t even stay in character a full day,” Kimizuki smirked.

“Don’t make me believe you could,” Yuu snapped.

“I think we should do as Tanaka says and start making you two get along from now on,” Daichi said with a very big, very stiff smile on his face as he spoke.

“Are they in trouble now?” Yoichi asked Tanaka in a whispering voice.

“They made Daichi-san angry with them. I’d say they’re in big trouble,” Tanaka whispered back.

Yoichi did feel bad for his friends. He really didn’t wish for them to be in a situation like that, standing in front of a guy who was as angry as Daichi was at this moment. Yet he was also happy that it wasn’t himself in this situation and he knew that Yuu and Kimizuki had brought this upon themselves, so somehow they deserved it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I remember to upload another chapter yesterday? I don't remember. I think I forgot, but I'm not sure. It's a bit strange. All I did yesterday wad edit my big assignment (15 pages) and watch anime, it's not like I did a lot of stuff. I handed the assignment in this morning and handed back the books I borrowed from the library, so now everything's over. I feel like I should celebrate, but I don't have the energy.   
> Now I'm done blabbering. Thanks for reading the story.
> 
> Jackie


	8. Early Morning

When Sugawara awoke in the morning he wasn’t entirely sure of where he was. The room looked unfamiliar, not like his own room. It wasn’t until he looked around and noticed the clothes that weren’t his own, and the sword that he normally wouldn’t have anything to do with, that he remembered all the things that had happened yesterday.

He was in an entirely different world, a world where it had ended. Only one tenth of the human population had survived a virus that had spread eight years ago. Nishinoya and Kageyama were here too and they had all taken on the appearance of three boys who used to belong to this world. If Sugawara remembered correctly the boy he looked like was named Hyakuya Yuuichiro, and this was his room. Nishinoya and Kageyama were both in this building. Nishinoya was staying in the room that belonged to the one he had taken the appearance of, Saotome Yoichi. Kageyama was also staying in the room of the one he had replaced, a guy named Kimizuki Shiho.

There were two girls who knew who they really were, Hiiragi Shinoa and Sanguu Mitsuba. They had agreed to meet up outside this building at 8 in the morning. Sugawara checked his clock as he remembered this. The time was a little past 7 in the morning. He still had about an hour. That was plenty of time.

He got out of bed, found some of Yuu’s clothes and pulled them on. It felt a little strange to borrow these without asking for permission, but the owner of the clothes wasn’t here and Sugawara had nothing else to wear. Besides, Shinoa had said it was okay when he asked her on the day before.

He checked his reflection in the mirror. Yuu was looking back at him with bright green eyes. It was a little weird that he couldn’t see his own reflection when he looked, but he would have to get used to it.

He had also been taking a close look at Yuu’s face in the mirror last night and tried to memorize what it looked like. Especially stuff like his hair was something he needed to remember. He didn’t want to look off from how Yuu normally looked. That would make it easier for someone else to figure out what was going on. He didn’t want to get into trouble in this world, primarily because he wasn’t sure if he would know how to get himself out of it again if it happened. He hoped that the other two would have the sense to be careful as well, but knowing them, it probably won’t happen.

“It should be okay,” Sugawara decided as he finished the close inspection on Yuu’s face, deciding that he looked like he did before he went to sleep. Then he checked the time.

The inspection had taken a bit longer than he thought. The clock showed 7:31 now. He still had about half an hour until he had to be downstairs, but he figured he could go now. Maybe he could find some place to get some breakfast from.

* * *

 

“You’re early, Yuu-san,” Shinoa said as she stopped in front of Sugawara. She smiled. They had agreed that as long as they were in public areas, Shinoa and Mitsuba would call Sugawara and the others by the names of the ones they looked like.

“I woke early,” Sugawara answered, smiling.

“Is this a change of life-style?” Shinoa asked. “You’re usually late because you oversleep.”

“Yeah,” Sugawara had no idea if Yuu was early or not, normally, but he had to play it off.

“Kimizuki should be here by now,” Mitsuba commented.

“Yeah, he’s usually early. Did you decide to try out each other’s habits?” Shinoa asked.

“Eh…” Sugawara trailed off, not knowing what to say. Shinoa leaned closer and put her lips to his ear.

“Remember that you’re supposed to hate Kimizuki-san,” she reminded him in a whisper.

“Why would I swap habits with him?” Sugawara asked halfheartedly.

“Who?” Kageyama came down the stairs and walked up to them. He looked very confused and very dumb at that exact moment. This caused Shinoa to bend over with laughter and Mitsuba had to fight her own giggles.

“What?” Kageyama asked.

“I don’t think Kimizuki-san has ever looked so dumb in his life!” Shinoa laughed.

Kageyama still didn’t look like he understood so Sugawara started thinking of a way to help him while still keeping his own role.

“Aren’t you supposed to be smarter than me?” he asked.

Mitsuba gave up on fighting her giggles and started laughing while Shinoa laughed so hard tears started rolling down her cheeks.

“And now… and now Yuu-san admits his stupidity?” she gasped through laughter.

Sugawara and Kageyama looked at each other, both agreeing that this was not funny at all. Then Sugawara noticed something and spoke up, to not have his voice drowned by the girls’ laughter attack.

“Excuse me, but isn’t Ni-Yoichi late?” he asked. He had been about to say Nishinoya’s real name but remembered to correct it before he could finish pronouncing it.

“Now that you mention it,” Shinoa stopped laughing and looked up at Sugawara with a straight face. Mitsuba stopped laughing too.

“Where’s his room again?” Kageyama asked.

“I’ll lead the way,” Shinoa sighed before leading the way up the stairs and to the room where Nishinoya was staying. She knocked on the door while the others stood behind her, waiting. But there was no response.

“Yoichi-san, are you in there?” she asked.

There was still no response.

Before Sugawara noticed it, Shinoa had reached behind her and grabbed him by the arm. She now pushed him forward, towards the door and he opened it. It wasn’t locked.

The room was dark and it didn’t take more than a couple of seconds for Sugawara to figure out that Nishinoya had overslept, and was still sleeping. They all went in and closed the door as they wouldn’t need to pretend like everything was normal anymore.

“Nishinoya?” Sugawara walked over to the bed and looked at Nishinoya, who was still sleeping, unaware that there were four other people in his room. “Nishinoya you need to wake up, you’re late,”

Nishinoya rubbed his eye but didn’t respond aside from that.

Realizing that gentle methods wouldn’t work, Sugawara formed his hands like a funnel and put them to Nishinoya’s ear before he bend down and spoke directly into it:

“Nishinoya, you’ve overslept. Get up.”

Nishinoya jumped and sat up as Sugawara moved away. He looked around and noticed how everyone was gathered in the room.

“What?” he asked.

“As Sugawara-san said, you overslept,” Shinoa said.

“What time is it?” Nishinoya asked.

“8:10 in the morning,” Shinoa answered after checking her watch. “Mi-chan and I will kindly turn away while you get dressed,” she continued before turning herself and Mitsuba around.

Sugawara dragged Nishinoya out of bed and then the smaller boy went to get some clothes and got himself dressed. He then looked in the mirror to check his hair.

“I still can’t see my own face!” he exclaimed with irritation.

“None of us can see our own faces,” Sugawara said.

“I can’t either?” Kageyama asked. He hadn’t checked it at all since they were standing by the puddle the day before.

“Maybe you should check it too then, Kageyama,” Sugawara advised.

“Can we turn around?” Shinoa asked.

“You could’ve just looked,” Nishinoya said. “I’m not shy,”

“I’d mind if you saw little innocent me though,” Shinoa said while turning around.

“Little; yes, innocent; no,” Mitsuba commented.

“But I’m sure Mi-chan wouldn’t mind you looking,” Shinoa continued after hearing the comment.

“I never said that!” Mitsuba exclaimed.

“I think I’m fine now,” Nishinoya declared as he turned around. “What now?” he asked.

“I presume you haven’t had breakfast yet,” Shinoa said while looking from Kageyama, to Nishinoya to Sugawara.

“I don’t know where to get it from, I don’t think they do either,” Sugawara answered.

“Figures,” Shinoa said. “That’s why Mi-chan and I will show you that today and we’ll start practicing you using your weapons. And on that note, Sugawara-san and Kageyama-san, you should probably go get your weapons. It seems you forgot them.”

And so, Sugawara and Kageyama both got busy getting to their separate rooms to get their weapons before they could rejoin the others and go get some breakfast.


	9. A Warning

“You’re not holding it right, Sugawara-san! And I thought you were Japanese,” Shinoa accused as she walked over to inspect Sugawara’s grip on the handle of the sword. They were standing in a practice room and attempting to learn to use these new weapons without activating them.

“I am!” Sugawara exclaimed, slightly surprised by this accusation. “But no one says that all Japanese people have to know how to hold a sword.”

“What’s he doing wrong?” Nishinoya looked over his shoulder. He was holding the bow up in front of him, not entirely sure how to handle it properly.

Shinoa looked to Sugawara as she answered Nishinoya’s question. “You’re holding the sword with two hands. This is a single-hand sword, so you should only use one hand to hold it. And tighten your grip. It looks like you’re afraid to touch it.”

Sugawara did as he was told, removing one hand from the handle of the sword and tightening his grip around it with the other.

“Isn’t it dangerous for us to be in contact with these weapons as well? I mean, they’re not ours.” Sugawara asked.

“That’s why we’re not activating them yet,” Shinoa said. “If you can handle the weapon without activating the curse, it would be the best option,”

“Curse?” Kageyama asked. He was currently getting instructions from Mitsuba on how to handle the twin-swords.

“These weapons are also called cursed gear, because they hold a curse, in the shape of a demon, that makes us able to use them to kill vampires,” Shinoa answered.

“It’s not the weapon itself that is dangerous,” Mitsuba continued. “It’s the curse within that’ll kill you.”

“Exactly as Mi-chan said,” Shinoa confirmed.

“Question!” Nishinoya exclaimed. “If I need to hold this right, don’t I need an arrow?” he asked.

“Now that you mention it… did Yoichi-san ever use arrows?” Shinoa asked while looking to Mitsuba.

“No, the arrow and the precise aim came from his curse, I think,” Mitsuba answered. She then looked more directly at Shinoa. “How will he use it then?”

“He’ll simply pretend,” Shinoa said.

“Huh?” Nishinoya tilted his head in a questioning way.

“What about the rest of us?” Kageyama asked.

“You don’t need the curse to use your weapons, so you will need to learn to use them,” Shinoa said.

“It seems there’s no way around it,” Sugawara said while smiling. He attempted to swing the sword but this caused Shinoa to glare at him.

“You’re doing that wrong too,” she said.

“You too, Kageyama!” Mitsuba yelled at Kageyama who had also started swinging the twin-swords.

“Tell me how to do it then,” Kageyama said.

Shinoa and Mitsuba exchanged one look, and then both nodded.

“Then you two will fight each other with your weapons.” Shinoa said. “Step up in front of each other and prepare for battle.”

“Why do we need to? I have two swords, Sugawara has one. It’s obvious who will win,” Kageyama said while eying Sugawara’s one sword.

“Sometimes two swords are more difficult to handle than one,” Sugawara said. However, there was no doubt that Kageyama could handle them if he tried. He was honestly glad that he wasn’t stuck with the twin-sword but only needed to focus on one.

Nishinoya dropped the bow on the floor and went to sit next to where Mitsuba and Shinoa were standing, not so far from where Sugawara and Kageyama were preparing to fight each other, as far as that went.

“I wish I’d get to fight,” Nishinoya said as Mitsuba turned to look down at him.

“You dropped your bow, what’ll you fight with?” she asked.

“Fists and raw energy,” Nishinoya smiled up at her with confidence. Mitsuba didn’t return the smile.

“You start on the count of three,” Shinoa said, knowing that they would need a signal for the fight to begin. She watched as both Sugawara and Kageyama prepared for battle.

“One… two… three… begin!” she exclaimed, and Kageyama charged forward while Sugawara dodged his attack and attempted to get behind him for a back-attack.

“Their fighting style is different,” Mitsuba said as Kageyama spun around and blocked Sugawara’s attack with one sword while attacking with the other. Sugawara jumped backwards to avoid the incoming attack.

“You’re right. Sugawara-san’s fighting while using his brains, looking for the best way to attack while Kageyama-san is simply acting on instinct,” Shinoa said.

“But Kageyama’s also fighting cleverly,” Mitsuba stated. “If you look more closely at his fighting style, it does look a bit like Kimizuki’s.”

“Whereas Sugawara-san is still ways off Yuu-san’s fighting style,” Shinoa sighed.

“It’s a little similar to when they’re playing setter,” Nishinoya observed. “The items they use are just different.”

Both girls managed to send the sitting boy a confused look as the door opened and a soldier entered, walking up to Shinoa.

“You’ve been summoned by Lieutenant Coronel Guren,” he said.

“So he wants to see me?” Shinoa tilted her head. “Is it important?” she asked.

“He just said that he needed to see you in his office right away,” the soldier said before turning around and leaving the room.

“Mi-chan, watch the battle while I go speak to our superior,” Shinoa smirked. She turned around and was about to leave the room when she remembered something and stopped to look to the fighting two in the middle of the room. “Yuu-san!” she called.

“Eh… what?” Sugawara asked while dodging an incoming attack from Kageyama. He had almost adjusted to being called by this name.

“I’m going to see Guren-san,” Shinoa said.

“Can-“ Sugawara was about to ask if he could come with when Shinoa shook her head. Understanding what it meant, Sugawara changed the question. “I wanna come with!” he said.

“That won’t do,” Shinoa said. “You’d just end up yelling at him like he really was your father, plus, the conversation might get on a too intelligent level for you to keep up.”

Sugawara didn’t know what to say to that, and Shinoa didn’t give him a chance to figure it out before she had left the room.

“What was that about?” Kageyama asked. He stood with one sword pointing at Sugawara, but he was too far away to cut and he wasn’t attempting an attack.

“It was nothing,” Sugawara answered. “Just some kind advice,”

“Shinoa is a lot, but I’m not entirely sure I’d call her kind,” Mitsuba commented.

“I’m just wondering where the warning was,” Nishinoya stated.

Sugawara sat down and laid the sword on the floor beside him. “She told me of Yuuichiro-kun’s relationship with this Guren, and that he is intelligent. I assume she also wants me to stay away from him as much as possible,” Sugawara said.

“If she wants you to stay away from that guy, then why did she tell you about him?” Kageyama asked.

“In case I run into him.” Sugawara said. “Since he’s intelligent, if I run into him and fail to act exactly like Yuuichiro-kun, he will catch on, and I hate to say it, but since it seems like Yuuichiro-kun and Guren are close, I might actually be the one of us who is the easiest to see through.”

“But you’re smart!” Nishinoya said.

“That’s his weak point,” Mitsuba said. “Yuu is an idiot who thinks of nothing but getting stronger and fighting vampires. Sugawara is actually thinking about his action. In fact, the only thing Sugawara and Yuu seem to have in common is their kind attitude. There is no doubt Sugawara will try to make it hard for Lieutenant Coronel to figure out that something’s off, but there’s also no doubt that he’ll fail. The question is just how bad it’ll turn out.” Mitsuba summed up.

“In other words, if Guren and I are to meet, we’re gonna be in big trouble,” Sugawara said.


	10. Receive

“This is your fault! You idiot!” Kimizuki yelled in Yuu’s face. They were standing outside the entrance to the gym. The doors were shut behind them.

“Why is it my fault that you have a shitty personality?” Yuu yelled back in Kimizuki’s face.

“Because you’re an idiot who can’t concentrate on doing two things at once,” Kimizuki said.

“Then it’s your fault for provoking me and having me concentrate on two things at once!” Yuu yelled back at Kimizuki.

“It’s your fault for letting yourself get provoked. On top of that it was you who made Daichi angry with us!” Kimizuki yelled, feeling like he was just about ready to punch Yuu in the face, which was exactly what he did in the next second.

Being as simpleminded as Yuu is, he simply returned the favor and punched Kimizuki in the face as well.

Inside, Yoichi was watching through the window and listening to the argument between his two friends. He did feel sorry for them, but he knew that he was in no position to do or say anything. Not only because Daichi was the one who had the final say on the matter here, but also because it was part of Yoichi’s role not to care.

“Yoichi!” It was Daichi who was calling for him and Yoichi walked over.

“What is it?” he asked.

“We’re about to resume practice,” Daichi said. “Remember the basics of receiving?”

Yoichi thought back. He did recall how he was to hold his hands and how to receive the ball. He remembered that there was a way to take control of the ball. He didn’t know how to do that though.

“I remember,” he said.

“Good. Be as reckless as you can. Our coach will be coming here soon and we’ll start the serious practice. Remember your name?” he asked.

“Nishinoya Yuu, also called Noya by some,” Yoichi answered, remembering that more clearly than the receiving methods.

“Good,” Daichi said.

“If the coach is coming and sees Yuu-kun and Kimizuki-kun outside, fighting, what will happen?” Yoichi asked, feeling concerned for his friends.

“Enoshita is taking care of that. You worry about yourself and your identity,” Daichi said.

“Got it,” Yoichi nodded his head.

“Let me see your receive,” Daichi demanded.

Yoichi did as he was told and held his hands like he was about to receive a ball spiked from the opposite side of the net. Daichi watched and corrected little mistakes. Overall Yoichi figured he was fine. What were corrected were minor things, if he held his hands in the right ankle he wouldn’t risk hurting himself as much.

“I have a question though,” Yoichi said as Daichi was fixing the last on his receive.

“What’s that?” Daichi asked.

“What if I can’t reach the ball with this form?” Yoichi asked.

“Then you throw yourself in the direction of the ball. Make sure it doesn’t touch the floor. Any other body part is fine. Nishinoya can receive almost any way he wants. He has slipped his hand under a ball only centimeters from the floor and also received using his foot,” Daichi said.

“So it mustn’t touch the floor at all costs.” Yoichi determined.

Daichi nodded, confirming Yoichi’s statement.

This was the time when Ukai entered the gym and Yoichi had to fall into his role as the second year student Nishinoya Yuu, the libero of Karasuno’s volleyball team.

“Don’t worry about your role so much,” A comforting hand was placed on Yoichi’s shoulder and for a moment he thought it was Daichi who had been beside him just now, but when he looked up, he noticed that it was Asahi. He wore a smile that was supposed to be calming, but sadly, it made him come across as a tiny bit creepy. Yoichi kept himself calm though.

“We will do everything we can to make it as easy on you as possible. Speak loudly and encourage whenever you can and concentrate on receives. It’ll be fine,” he assured.

“Tha-Thank you,” Yoichi said. “I’ll do my best,” he answered in return.

Asahi removed his hand and the two approached the rest of the team who had gathered around Ukai. Two female students had also entered the gym around now.

Yoichi did his best to pay attention to whatever the coach was saying, but he wasn’t entirely sure he understood all of it. The subject was volleyball, but it was on a very technical level and it was difficult to keep up. He was pretty sure that he had an idea of how Yuu had been feeling during classes about now.

“Alright, let’s get started,” Ukai declared. Then he looked around and noticed something. “Where are Kageyama and Sugawara?” he asked.

Everyone was silent. Yoichi had a bad taste in his mouth and could sense how he was feeling more and more nervous. What if he was figured out because Yuu and Kimizuki were missing?

“Both are sick,” Daichi said. “Kageyama reported to me just before practice and Suga didn’t show up today.”

“Seriously?” Ukai asked in disbelief but then shrugged it off. “Then we’ll just practice without setters.” There was a look on his face that told Yoichi that it would not be an easy task.

“What’ll we do then?” Hinata asked. “I want to spike some!”

Ukai thought. “We’ll focus on serve and receive today,” he said.

And so it was like that. The other players went on the court, three at a time and Ukai delivered the serves. Everyone got to receive a few serves and Ukai approved of them. At the end, only Yoichi was left.

“Nishinoya!” Ukai called.

“Yes!” Yoichi yelled at the top of his lungs, trying to conceal all traces of nervousness. He headed out on the court while attempting to keep his nerves under control. He wasn’t scared, he just knew that he couldn’t fail. He absolutely couldn’t fail unless he wanted to get in trouble.

Ukai prepared to serve. Yoichi had watched him do it before. It didn’t look much different from when he was using Gekkouin. He’d just need to see where it would hit and then go for it, move quickly.

He had already had a feeling that he knew where the ball would be going. He was pretty sure Ukai would aim for one of the lines, probably just barely having the ball hit inside the court. It would be difficult to catch, but Yoichi would have to manage while pretending like it was a piece of cake.

Once he had an idea of precisely where the ball would be going, Yoichi headed towards the spot as fast as he possibly could. Just in time he realized that he was moving a bit too fast. His legs could only barely keep up with how fast he wanted to move and he nearly tripped, but made it without actually falling and he received the ball.

Ukai made another serve while Yoichi was making his way back to the middle. He figured this was the spot where it would be the easiest to reach anything. Once again he only just barely made it in time. Then a straight ball was shot and he received it with ease and then there were two more near the line of the court.

By the end, Yoichi could feel the sweat running down his body. He wasn’t used to working this hard, yet he tried to smile. Tanaka and his sister Saeko had told him that Nishinoya would almost always smile as long as he wasn’t being dead serious. Yoichi figured that Nishinoya wouldn’t be dead serious at a receiving practice, so he kept on a smile.

They did other sorts of practice too, but luckily enough, Yoichi didn’t have to receive any more for that day. He could simply focus on playing Nishinoya’s character and socializing with his teammates. Inside he had a feeling that everything was going well and when practice finished without a single question being asked about his identity, Yoichi was relieved.

Yuu and Kimizuki had been forced into the boys changing room and the door had been locked. Both were exceptionally angry when it was opened again later and didn’t speak to anyone, not their teammates, not each other and not Yoichi either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a fun fact. Remember how Hinata would spell receive "R-E-C-I-E-V-E"? Up until I started writing this story, I would usually, accidentally, spell it the same way. It wasn't until I started writing this story and had to use the word a lot that I got it into my hands and subconsciousness that that's the way to spell it.   
> I don't know why I told that. It's a little embarrassing to admit it. It feels like I'm saying that I'm stupid. Perhaps I am?   
> Anyways, thanks for reading. It means a lot, just knowing that someone out there are enjoying my work. 
> 
> Jackie.


	11. Forgotten Hint

Sugawara, Nishinoya and Kageyama were all slowly adjusting to the life in this new broken world. It had only been two days since they got there, but thanks to Shinoa and Mitsuba, things were actually going well for them.

Shinoa had invited all of them into her room and they were now sitting there. It was really only in privacy that the three boys could act like themselves, and they needed that more often than any of them had expected.

“You wanted to talk?” Sugawara asked.

Shinoa nodded her head. “It’s about what Lieutenant Coronel Guren wanted to talk to me about yesterday,” she said.

After she had returned from her meeting with Guren she had intentionally avoided all talk of it, knowing that Sugawara, Nishinoya and Kageyama would probably like to talk about this as themselves and not as Yuu, Yoichi and Kimizuki.

“What did he say?” It was Mitsuba who was asking. She had no clue of the subject either. Shinoa was the only one who knew.

“Let’s divide the food first,” Shinoa turned to the white plastic bags with food and drinks that she had brought. She had invited all of them to talk and have lunch here. It was often easier to talk about something serious over a meal.

“What’d you buy?” Nishinoya stood from the chair he was sitting on to lean over and look at the content in the bags as Shinoa opened them.

“Nothing special. Some udon noodles with some meat and vegetables. I bought barley tea for drinks- Something wrong Kageyama-san?” Shinoa asked the last as she noticed a dissatisfied look on Kageyama’s face.

“Nothing,” Kageyama said as he bent down and opened his bag to pull up some milk he had brought.

“Oh yeah, Kageyama likes milk,” Sugawara said.

“Really?” Shinoa smiled.

Kageyama separated the straw from the carton and stuck it in the top. Then he placed it in his mouth and started sucking like his life depended on it.

“You seem to like milk,” Shinoa commented.

“I remember hearing someone say that milk would make you grow taller,” Sugawara stated, causing Shinoa to glance over at him.

“Did you say something, Sugawara-san?” she asked.

Sugawara’s smile, which had been on his face until now, faded. “I said nothing,” he lied.

Shinoa nodded her head. “I thought so,” she said before handing him some noodles. She then handed the others a portion and handed out little plastic forks as well and a carton of barley tea.

“Do you think they’re managing fine without us?” Kageyama asked as they were half way through eating their meal.

“Who?” Mitsuba asked.

“Our team in our own world,” Sugawara said before turning to answer Kageyama’s question. “They’ve got Daichi to keep tabs on our replacements and Hinata and Tanaka to keep up the good energy and motivation. The team will be fine.”

“You’re not worried?” Nishinoya asked.

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t,” Sugawara answered. “I just know that there is nothing I can do about their situation, so I’m more focused on our situation here.”

“Do you think those guys can fill in okay for us?” Kageyama asked.

“We may as well ask how well we are filling in for them,” Sugawara answered. “It’s somewhat similar.” At this, he looked to Shinoa and Mitsuba, hoping they would answer that question.

“You’re making mistakes, and plenty,” Shinoa said. “But overall, I’d say you’re doing fine. If this… Daichi… is keeping them in check, I’m sure it’s fine at your end too.”

“Yuu especially needs someone to keep him in check,” Mitsuba commented before drinking a bit of her tea.

“I have another question,” Nishinoya turned to Shinoa and Mitsuba as well. “For how long do we have to keep up the act?”

“About that,” Shinoa started. “I think I’ve got some information that can lead us to the solution of this problem.”

Sugawara’s and Nishinoya’s faces lit up while Kageyama looked the same as always.

“What have you learned?” Sugawara asked.

“Apparently there was some strange activity around noon two days ago, that’s around the time when Yuu-san, Yoichi-san and Kimizuki-san disappeared and the three of you showed up,” Shinoa explained. “Lieutenant Coronal Guren mentioned that. It was also at around the location where we were at.”

“So you were asked about that?” Mitsuba asked, also looking to Shinoa now.

“Did you tell him anything?” Sugawara asked, feeling a little worried.

“I told him a lie,” Shinoa answered with a smile.

“A lie?” Nishinoya asked.

“Lieutenant Coronal Guren asked me if I had seen anything while we were on patrol. I said no,” Shinoa smiled.

“At least that’s something,” Kageyama said while sucking furiously on his straw to get the last drops of milk out of the carton.

“Don’t relax too much,” Shinoa warned them. “If you are discovered, you are not the only ones who will get in trouble anymore. Mi-chan and I will get in trouble too!”

“Didn’t you say your families were high ranking?” Sugawara asked.

“Lieutenant Coronal Guren doesn’t care about that,” Mitsuba said. “That’s why I serve under her,” she glared at Shinoa as she said this and the other girl smiled.

“I thought we were done discussing this, Mi-chan,” she said.

“We are,” Mitsuba answered. “It was just an example.”

“So we really gotta be careful,” Sugawara said before Shinoa could come up with another sarcastic remark to provoke Mitsuba.

“Yes,” Shinoa said. “And pray that nothing bad happens until we figure out a way back.”

“But I still don’t get how,” Nishinoya said.

“It’s obvious,” Kageyama removed the straw from his lips and looked at all of them. “We’re tracing back the power to its original location, by that we will find the organization and have them help us find the way back.” He made is sound about as simple as making a basic toss.

“Oh!” Shinoa exclaimed. “Kageyama-san really might be as smart as he looks!”

“What?” Kageyama looked over at her.

“Oh nothing,” Shinoa smiled innocently. “Anyways, we have to be even more careful as Sugawara-san says, especially around Lieutenant Coronel. But we also need to solve this case and the best way to do that, is exactly as Kageyama-san has suggested.”

“Are we going back there then?” Sugawara asked.

“As soon as we can,” Shinoa answered.

“When’s that?” Mitsuba asked.

Shinoa thought. “I’m signing us up for patrol in the area as soon as possible. The first time we get is when we’ll go.”


	12. Suspecting

It was the third full day Yuu, Yoichi and Kimizuki had spent in this pre-apocalyptic world. It was the third time they had taken classes at Karasuno High School, the third time they had attended volleyball practice and the third time Yuu and Kimizuki had been kicked out of the gym for arguing and causing trouble. The mood in the gym was very low. No one knew how to change it. Most were just trying to come up with a way to have Yuu and Kimizuki attend practice as a senpai and a kouhai who knew how to get along.

It was after practice on the third day when the third year manager Shimizu called out to Daichi, claiming his attention.

“What is it?” Daichi asked.

Yoichi looked over. It wasn’t the first time he had heard Shimizu speak or the first time he had heard her speaking to Daichi. There was just something in the tone she was using that made him think this wasn’t just the normal everyday conversation between the manager and captain of a volleyball team.

“Where are Sugawara and Kageyama?” she asked.

“Oh…” was all Daichi could seem to say at first. Then he pulled it together. “They’re both still sick,” he lied with a hint of difficulty on his face.

Shimizu narrowed her eyes slightly. “Then who is the guy pretending to be Nishinoya?” she asked.

“Ho-How did you see through, Kyouko-san?” Tanaka asked. He was standing beside Yoichi, wearing a surprised expression on his face.

Shimizu glanced over at them with a look that asked them how she could not know.

“I’ve seen both Sugawara and Kageyama during school hours. I know of Nishinoya because he isn’t acting like himself. He is holding back.”

“Holding back?” Yoichi asked.

Shimizu nodded as if Yoichi had just confirmed her statement. It took him about five seconds to realize that he really had. He had been speaking in a too low volume, asked a question to a statement he had been supposed to deny and in general he had failed completely regarding the manager.

“Where are Sugawara and Kageyama?” Shimizu asked.

Daichi sighed, giving up.

“In the changing room, to learn to get along.” He answered.

Shimizu raised an eyebrow in a questioning way, not entirely sure she understood what he meant by the two setters trying to get along.

“We are-“ Yoichi stopped himself before he could say anything else. He had been about to tell Shimizu everything that had happened and explain the situation, but not only would it let her know everything, he would also be stepping out of character, by far.

“Go on,” Shimizu looked to him. Then she looked across the gym where the first year manager, Yachi, was talking with Hinata.

“We are not from this world,” Yoichi said. “We swapped places with the ones we look and sound like now.”

“So it’s a parallel universe?” Shimizu asked.

“No it’s different,” Yoichi answered and then stopped. He didn’t know how exactly to explain the situation in a way that would make sense.

“To anyone but those who saw them swapping there is a filter over them that makes them look like those they swapped with. You may see Nishinoya but in reality, the boy standing there looks nothing like him,” Daichi explained.

“Who can see them?” Shimizu asked.

“Me, Tanaka and Asahi,” Daichi answered. “And of course they can see their own true appearance.”

“I see,” Shimizu nodded. “Who else knows?” she asked.

“Everyone on the team and then you,” Daichi answered her. “Anyways, maybe you should see, or rather, experience the reason why Kageyama and Sugawara can’t be seen here.”

Shimizu nodded her head and as soon as the gym had been cleaned up, Daichi led the way to the boys changing room at school. Shimizu, Tanaka, Asahi, Hinata and Yoichi were following him.

“It’s not my fault you’re stupid,” they could hear Kimizuki’s voice say through the door.

“I’m not stupid! It’s not my fault everything in this world is so difficult!” Yuu yelled remarkably louder.

“You could have just learned it, or better yet, we could have avoided ending up here!” Kimizuki said.

“It’s not like that’s my fault! Why do you sound like it is!”

“Because anything bad that happens is usually your fault,” Kimizuki argued.

Daichi sighed and opened the door. He went inside and bothered to smack the both of them in the head.

“That still looks weird…” Hinata said as he watched it.

“You see through the filter too, Hinata?” Shimizu asked.

“Huh?” Hinata hadn’t heard of the filter before so he was a bit confused and not entirely sure of what she was actually talking about.

“You see the ones we are replacing,” Yoichi explained.

“Oh… uh… yeah!” Hinata exclaimed.

“Who’s that?” Yuu asked suddenly, looking to Shimizu. He and Kimizuki had never been to an actual practice so they hadn’t taken note of her.

“She’s the third year manager for the team,” Kimizuki said.

“Who told you that, Kimizuki-kun?” Yoichi asked.

“Hinata and… Yachi,” Kimizuki said.

“You remember!” Hinata exclaimed.

“Unlike you and that guy I’m not an i- a dumbass,” Kimizuki corrected himself. He was trying to imitate Kageyama’s speech patterns to make them sound more alike. Yuu hadn’t even bothered to do that, he had noted.

“Kageyama doesn’t use it when referring to himself,” Hinata chuckled with obvious amusement.

“I have a question for you two,” Daichi said coldly. “When do you plan to fix the problem?”

“We can’t fix it, not here,” Yoichi said. “The problem is in our world so-“

“That’s not what he meant,” Kimizuki said.

“You’re right,” Daichi said. “I meant your behavior towards each other. When are you going to learn to get along as you can attend practice?”

“When he starts treating me like I’m his senpai!” Yuu exclaimed.

“Kageyama is new to the concept respect,” Kimizuki said. “And the day I’m going to respect you as anything is the day when the apocalypse in our world becomes undone!”

Yuu started thinking of a reply, but before he could do that, another realization hit him. “Wasn’t that what the organization Shinoa was talking about was doing?” he asked.

“What orga-“ Kimizuki cut himself off as he realized what Yuu was talking about. “Do you think they have reached that conclusion?” he asked.

“I’m not following…” Yoichi said.

“Shinoa mentioned a spell organization that was trying to find a way to undo the catastrophe. They were supposed to be in the area where we swapped place with those other guys,” Kimizuki said.

“Oh!” Yoichi said. “That’s actually a major clue! Do you think there’s a way we could let them know?” he asked.

“Is there a way back?” Kimizuki asked drily.

Yoichi sighed and shook his head, giving up on the idea. If there was no way back, there most likely wasn’t any way to communicate either. It really was just that simple.

“That wasn’t the problem you were supposed to fix,” Daichi said.

“If he stops acting like an idiot, I might consider getting along with him,” Kimizuki said.

“Who’s the idiot?” Yuu yelled.

“Both of you, those kinds of remarks are not needed,” Daichi yelled to claim their attention.

“Speak nicely to each other,” Shimizu said. “That might actually help for a start,” she smiled at them and Yuu and Kimizuki both found that they were staring at her for a little while longer than they would normally stare at a girl.

“If Kimizuki stops talking shit, I’ll stop,” Yuu said.

“Then, I’ll stop,” Kimizuki said. “But then at least try not to cause more trouble.”

“I can’t help it!” Yuu snapped.

“Remember what I taught you,” Daichi said. “You seem to be a little more intelligent than you think, so let’s begin by putting that to use.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You should probably be glad I finished writing this story about a month ago because otherwise it would have turned into something that reflects the serious overload I have right now. Hopefully that WILL get out, but not right now and not with these two universes. I love how inspiration can be found practically everywhere. It's AMAZING!!! Oh that overload...   
> As always, thanks for reading I appreciate it a lot that you take the time. 
> 
> Jackie


	13. Obvious

Sugawara, Nishinoya and Kageyama were on their way to the room Shinoa had booked. This was where they would be practicing use of their weapons. It was the first time in a while when it had just been the three of them without the girls walking in a public area. This proved to be troublesome in more ways than one. One reason was because they had no one to help them stay in character while they were on their way, and another reason…

“Do you guys remember where that room was supposed to be?” Nishinoya asked.

“I don’t,” Kageyama said.

“I was hoping Kageyama remembered…” Sugawara smiled sheepishly at them. “I think it was in that building though. It did belong to some kind of army, right?” He pointed to a large building which they were walking by at the moment.

“It does look right,” Kageyama confirmed.

“Then, we should enter,” Sugawara decided before they started heading on inside the building.

They walked around inside the building for around five minutes before they found themselves faced with the same problem again. However, this time they had found nothing that could lead them in the right direction.

“I’m getting worried,” Sugawara said. “I don’t think this is the right building.”

“What makes you say that?” Nishinoya asked.

“There is nothing familiar,” it was Kageyama who answered this time.

“It looks too formal,” Sugawara said. “I don’t think we even belong here.”

“Do you remember the way out?” Nishinoya asked.

“Not really…” Sugawara said.

Kageyama looked around. “I don’t either…” Then he saw two turning around the corner and he turned to Nishinoya and Sugawara to push them out of sight along with himself. He wasn’t always that smart, but he knew that they probably shouldn’t be seen in a place like this.

“And Shinoa said we could find it easily…” Nishinoya muttered.

“Don’t speak, Nishinoya,” Sugawara whispered. He had realized the situation as he had felt Kageyama push them and now he was watching and waiting for the two strangers to pass by.

“Anyways, where are you going?” one of them asked.

“I was summoned by Kureto-nii but I’d rather go bother Guren some,” the other said.

“I’ll just be doing some paperwork…” the first said.

“I’ll probably be asked to do the same. Have you been to the library yet? They should have some important information regarding the subject.”

“Did I ever tell you what it was?” the first asked.

“I heard it from Guren,” the other said. “Did you go?”

“Not yet… I should,” the first said.

“Good idea,” the other answered cheerfully and then they couldn’t be heard anymore.

“Interesting,” Nishinoya was smirking. “Do you think they have important information here?” he asked.

“They might,” Sugawara answered. “But we should probably get going instead of figuring out if they do and what kind…”

“You wonder about it,” Nishinoya decided. “We should go look for it instead of the exit.”

“I think I saw the doors to a library earlier,” Kageyama said.

“Am I the only one who noted that they were mentioning Guren?” Sugawara asked.

“Just avoid him, it’s just one man!” Nishinoya said.

Sugawara decided to give up and let it go. He was kind of curious, just like Nishinoya had said. If they made sure not to stay here for too long, then it should work out just fine.

“Let’s go!” Nishinoya said and so they went down the hallways, towards where Kageyama thought he had seen the library was.

They hadn’t walked down more than two different hallways when Kageyama started doubting. “Was it this way or the other?” he wondered.

“Are we lost again?” Sugawara asked.

“That way!” Nishinoya said before rushing down the hallway to the left.

“I would have gone the other,” Kageyama sighed. He and Sugawara were still standing still. Neither of them wanted to follow Nishinoya, especially not if Kageyama said it was the other way they were supposed to go.

“You go to the library,” Sugawara decided. “I’ll go after Ni-Yoichi,” he said.

With that agreement, Kageyama went to the right and Sugawara turned left to go get Nishinoya back towards the library as they would be gathered.

The hallway was long, yet Sugawara couldn’t see nor hear Nishinoya anywhere around.  He wondered where he could have disappeared to within such a short time. Had he been running all the way?

It wasn’t long before Sugawara found that he had to choose a hallway to walk down again. He could see two. One was a little further ahead than the other. He wondered which of them Nishinoya would have chosen. He ended up deciding on the closer one since it was the more likely and he turned down this hallway.

He hadn’t been walking more than a few steps when a door down the middle opened and a man with black hair stepped out. He turned around and his purple eyes met Sugawara’s and a confused look appeared on the man’s face.

“What do you want now?” he asked. “I don’t have time for you to fool around now.” He sounded tired, yet there was something in the way he spoke that made it sound like he was expecting something.

“I was…” Sugawara stopped himself as he came to think that he was supposed to know this guy. That was what the guy’s attitude said. The way he had spoken was too casual. If he would have to take a guess at who this guy was, he would say this was Guren. But then what was he supposed to do?

“You were what, Yuu?” Guren asked.

What would Yuu say in a situation like this? He would probably yell something related to strength and power and ability.

“Teach me something cool I can use in battle!” he said. He had a feeling he wasn’t sounding much like Yuu but he was trying to speak like him at least. That had to count, right?

“Why should I?” Guren asked.

“Because you…” Sugawara didn’t know how to continue at all. What would be a good reason? Guren is responsible? But he wouldn’t know that. If he said something that wasn’t true he would be done.

Guren tilted his head to signal for Sugawara to go on and he blurted out with the thing he had thought of.

“Because you’re responsible!” he yelled.

“Responsible?” Guren asked. “You were the one who wanted to join so badly.”

“That’s not what I meant!” This line was a bit easier to say because it was actually true.

“I know,” Guren sighed. “Forget it Yuu. I don’t have the time, neither the will. Learn by yourself.”

“But-“ Sugawara was about to speak when Guren spoke again, interrupting him.

“What’s 200 minus 105 plus 49 divided by 12 and multiplied by 5?” he asked.

Sugawara thought. “If you go by the order it was listed, it’s 60 but if you follow the rules, it’s 217.5,” he answered.

Before Sugawara could manage to do, say or think anything else, he found himself pressed against the wall with the tip of Guren’s sword a few millimeters from his chest. He starred down at the sword and then up at Guren’s face. As he did so, it became clear that he had done something wrong. Guren’s eyes were narrowed with distrust and anger and he didn’t look tired or calm anymore. He looked like a man on duty.

“Who are you and what have you done with Hyakuya Yuuichiro?” Guren asked in a tone as cold and sharp as his sword.


	14. An Earful

“Who are you and what have you done with Hyakuya Yuuichiro?” Guren asked in a tone as cold and sharp as his sword. Sugawara kept on looking from the man, to the sword and then back up at the man. He couldn’t figure out where he had gone wrong.

“What are you saying?” Sugawara asked, trying to fall back into his assigned role. He figured that was the best thing to do for the time being. At least it was better than standing still and saying nothing.

“You know what I’m saying,” Guren said. “You’re not Yuu, you may look and sound like him but you’re way too clever.”

So it had actually been the calculation he had done wrong. That made sense. Shinoa had said that Yuu wasn’t exactly one of the brightest people. He would have to play it off, tell a lie to cover up for him answering correctly. In the middle of his thinking, Sugawara realized how strange it was that normally you would be doing the right thing by answering correctly, but in this case, the correct answer was the wrong one.

“I was guessing!” He exclaimed.

Guren snorted. “Nice try,” he said.

“What’s this? Are you guys that angry at each other now?” Shinoa’s voice sounded through the hallway.

“Since when did Yuu’s guesses become accurate?” Guren asked, looking at Shinoa. “Did you teach him how to calculate?”

“Oh that?” Shinoa asked. “No, another from the squad must have done that. I did ask him some mathematic questions the other day and teased him about not being able to answer them correctly.”

“And you want me to believe Yuu actually studied?” Guren asked.

“Maybe he got tired of being stupid?” Shinoa asked. “Then it would also make sense for him to call you stupid Guren.” She added the last bit with a small glance at Sugawara. She hadn’t needed to do that though. He had got the hint.

“Why can’t you tell that I’m me, Stupid Guren,” Sugawara said while trying to imitate the tone of a slightly angry child.

Guren moved his sword away from Sugawara’s chest and put it away. “It’s unlikely, but I’ll believe you,” he said, giving up. “But be careful what you say, Yuu,” he said before he went down the hallway, opposite of the way Yuu came from.

“Mi-chan found Yoichi-san,” Shinoa said in a hushed voice as Guren turned the corner. “We’re going to the library. Kimizuki-san’s already there.”

Sugawara nodded his head and followed Shinoa down the hallway and to the library. It was completely empty aside from Kageyama, Nishinoya and Mitsuba. That really was their luck.

“You found him,” Mitsuba said.

“Yes. We should go practice our teamwork,” Shinoa said. “Kimizuki-san, leave the books and come with us.”

Kageyama stood up and walked to the door. Mitsuba grabbed Nishinoya by the arm, but in such a way that it could be questioned whether she was holding onto him or not. Shinoa grabbed Sugawara by the sleeve and dragged him along in a way more obvious way. He could sense that she was annoyed from the way she was dragging him, but he also knew that most of this was just for show.

“Why are you doing this, Shinoa!” he yelled in a tone he hoped sounded like Yuu’s. And he kept on complaining like that until they reached the room where they were usually practicing the use of their weapons. He didn’t stop before the door was shut and Shinoa let go.

“Too bad you couldn’t act this well while talking to Guren,” Shinoa said.

“Sorry…” Sugawara apologized. He knew he had messed up.

“It wasn’t your fault entirely,” Shinoa said while glaring at Nishinoya. “What were you thinking getting all of you separated like that?”

“Hey! I was looking for knowledge to help us solve the problem!” Nishinoya yelled.

“You should find the library first then,” Mitsuba said.

“Kageyama found it!” Nishinoya argued.

“After you left,” Shinoa said. “And Sugawara-san had to go looking for you and then ran into Guren and blew our cover.”

“And that’s my fault too?” Nishinoya yelled.

“Yes!” Shinoa yelled back.

“I’m curious though,” Mitsuba said. “What made Sugawara fail?”

“I was asked a mathematical question and solved it correctly,” Sugawara answered.

“That doesn’t sound like failure to me,” Kageyama said.

“Yuu-san is stupid,” Shinoa said. “He would never answer a mathematical question correctly.”

“So what did you tell Lieutenant Coronel?” Mitsuba asked.

“That Yuu-san was studying. I’m not sure he bought that lie, but he did let us go,” Shinoa answered.

“Couldn’t you have just run?” Nishinoya asked.

“If we had done that, Lieutenant Coronel Guren might have stabbed Sugawara-san with that sword.” Shinoa said in a dark tone.

Subconsciously Sugawara moved his hand to his chest, right at that point where Guren’s sword had nearly touched him. “He really didn’t believe I was Yuuichiro,” he said.

“I still doubt he does,” Shinoa answered truthfully.

“Anyway, what did you figure out, Kageyama?” Nishinoya asked, changing the subject away from Guren and Sugawara, which was something Sugawara was at least grateful for.

“I think I found a useful document,” Kageyama said.

“Did you bring it?” Sugawara asked.

Kageyama fell silent. That silence could only be interpreted one way and everybody else let out a heavy sigh.

“Do you remember what it said?” Sugawara then asked.

“It was something about a different organization, actually several and areas where they were supposed to be. There was one with their whereabouts unspecified but they were in Tokyo somewhere. A source was named and their experiments were listed as well, like what they were researching. It does fit something with time,” Kageyama explained.

“Have you always been that good at memorizing, Kageyama-san?” Shinoa asked.

“I can memorize some stuff better than other,” Kageyama answered.

“When it comes to volleyball his memory is almost perfect,” Sugawara explained.

“That could be used in our favor,” Shinoa smiled at this.

“But Kageyama still isn’t that smart,” Sugawara added.

“I see,” Shinoa nodded her head at this. “Anyways, I think we should start on practicing and agree that you three are not wondering around on your own again. If you were to run into anyone from my family next time, it would be even worse than what we have experienced today.”

“Is your family that dangerous?” Nishinoya wondered without seeming to care.

“Yes,” Shinoa answered. “They are the rulers of the Imperial Demon Army, Guren’s superior and very powerful on top of that. I don’t see them often, but I know this much at least.”

“Why don’t you see them?” Sugawara asked.

“I don’t want to and they don’t even care about me, so what’s the point. Besides, they have some ways that I don’t approve very much of, so that’s why.” Shinoa explained. “Mi-chan doesn’t see her family much either.”

Mitsuba nodded to this.

“But enough about us,” Shinoa said. “Let’s get started on your training and pray that nothing worse is going to happen before we can solve this problem.”


	15. Low Energy

The ball went through the air, perfectly delivered from the other side of the net by the combination of Hinata and Kimizuki, who was supposed to be Kageyama. Yuu watched it fly across their half of the cord and be received by Daichi.

“It’s off!” he called as the ball went up again in a really strange direction which no one could use for anything, especially not Yuu. Another player went to receive this and the ball went flying towards the left where Asahi was at. Yuu watched him jump off and spike the ball back to the other side of the net.

Yoichi received. The ball went up again and Kimizuki went under it. Hinata ran quickly to the right. However, when Kimizuki tossed, it went in a different direction entirely. It went to the left where Tanaka was also jumping to spike the ball, similar to what Hinata was doing.

Yuu was about to run to the left when he felt Daichi run by while placing a hand on his shoulder, slightly pushing him backwards.

“What was that for?!” Yuu yelled at him.

“You can only touch the ball once while it’s on your side of the net. Only once it has been to the other side and returns you can touch it again,” Asahi explained. “If you were to receive the ball now, you would not be able to toss later.”

Yuu nodded his head, thinking that he was actually starting to understand the game a bit better.

“So no receiving?” he asked.

“I don’t think you were taught how to do it either,” Asahi said.

“Setter!” Daichi yelled snapping both Yuu and Asahi out of their conversation and Yuu looked up to see the ball a bit above his head and a bit to the right. He moved and raised his hands like he had been practicing with Daichi.

“Left!” Asahi called, already in place on the left.

Yuu felt his fingertips touch the ball and send it flying in that direction. In the second he did that, he realized he had put a little too much pressure on the ball, giving it too much speed. Well, looking on the bright side, at least he had gotten the direction right.

“Sorry! It’s too fast!” Yuu yelled as Asahi jumped, and spiked, both a bit faster than he was normally used to, but he did manage to hit the ball and send it to the other side of the net, scoring a point.

“Don’t talk at other times than after a point has been scored!” Daichi yelled.

“Idiot,” Kimizuki commented.

“Unnecessary remark,” Daichi snapped at Kimizuki.

“Sorry,” Kimizuki muttered. “Forgot they’re reserved for Hinata.”

“Kimizuki-kun is too forgetful,” Yoichi said.

“Louder, Noya-san! I can’t hear you!” Tanaka yelled.

“Can we take a break?” Kimizuki asked.

“But we just got started!” Hinata complained.

“If we kept playing until you got tired, we would be playing until tomorrow morning, dumbass,” Kimizuki told him in an irritated tone.

“We have been at it for a while now,” Asahi said. “Maybe it’s best to take a break to have them fall back into their roles.”

“I’m tired of acting!” Yuu complained.

“You’re going to act until they solve the problem at the other end, Yuu-kun,” Yoichi kindly informed Yuu, which caused the other to let out a loud, frustrated sound.

“Short break,” Daichi gave in. “It will be 15 minutes until the coach, Takeda-sensei and our managers will get here. Yuu, Yoichi and Kimizuki has to regain a grasp of their roles by then!”

“I want to catch a break from this…” Yuu said as he walked off the court and to the wall where he had a water bottle. Yoichi and Kimizuki followed him. It was rare for them to talk to each other in this world but they took every chance they could. Especially Yoichi felt distanced from the others because he had been part-taking in practice while Yuu and Kimizuki had been arguing in the boys’ changing room.

“I don’t think it’s possible, Yuu-kun,” he said.

“I get why he needs one,” Kimizuki said. “And I hate to admit it, but so do I.”

Yoichi nodded his head. He agreed that he wouldn’t mind getting a break either. They were practicing to act like the one they appeared as whenever they were at ‘home’ and at school they had to act out their roles. At practice it was both their roles and volleyball they needed to focus on. They always had to keep their role in the back of their heads because there was always someone who didn’t know of the swap around. Because of this, all three of them were constantly exhausted mentally.

“Do you think those other guys are feeling the same as us?” Yuu asked while sitting down and leaning the back of his head against the wall.

“Probably not,” Kimizuki said. “They have Shinoa and Mitsuba and normally they are the only ones we are around.”

“I wish we got to rest more too…” Yuu said.

“I don’t really want to act anymore,” Yoichi said, plopping down next to Yuu.

“You don’t sound like Noya-senpai at all!” It was Hinata who was approaching them.

“I wasn’t really trying,” Yoichi said.

“We were discussing how we need a break from all this acting as someone we are not,” Kimizuki said.

“How’d you get that?” Hinata asked.

“No clue,” Yoichi said.

“But why do you need a break in the first place?” Hinata then asked.

“We are acting at every hour of the day as it is, I think all of us need a time when we can be ourselves for a little longer than fifteen minutes,” Kimizuki said.

“He’s-“ Yoichi began to speak when he felt Yuu’s head drop as it was resting against his shoulder. “Seems Yuu-kun relaxed too much,” he commented.

“He has to think every hour of the day, it’s new to him,” Kimizuki said. “Positively speaking, it might be that he’ll get smarter from this.”

“That would be useful,” Yoichi said.

“I’m not gonna get my hopes up for an intelligent conversation with him though,” Kimizuki said, to which Yoichi laughed.

“Aren’t you supposed to get into character?” Daichi came over as well and looked down at Yoichi and Hinata from a standing position. Kimizuki was still standing too.

“Yuu-kun fell asleep,” Yoichi said.

Daichi nodded his head. He could see that. “I am already thinking of a way you can get to relax over the weekend. Right now is a bad time though. Wake him up and get his mind working.” Despite his words, he didn’t sound very strict. The reason was because he already knew that they were all working their hardest to fill in their separate roles as perfectly as they could and he especially knew that Yuu had been having a hard time with learning how to think and keep up with classes. He was exhausted too because he had to teach Yuu everything they learned from the beginning when they came back to his place. This usually took long so they often got to bed late and Yuu did have to play Sugawara at every other hour of the day so he would of course have it worse.

“Yuu-kun?” Yoichi called, turning to Yuu and shaking him. The shaking increased in harshness until Yuu woke up and started rubbing his eyes. That was when Yoichi stopped.

“Don’t sleep,” Kimizuki said.

“Sorry…” Yuu pouted while looking around him. He sat up straight and sent Daichi a quick glare that didn’t go unnoticed. He knew exactly who had ordered Yoichi to wake him up.

“Yuu, Kimizuki,” Daichi said without looking at the two. “Good job solving that problem of yours.” Then he walked away and left Hinata, of all people, in charge of helping the three outsiders regain a grasp of their roles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If it's not obvious, I don't really know anything of volleyball except what you learn in Haikyuu. I only played a little in school... 6 years ago? I think it's been that long since I took a proper PE lesson that involved balls. Point is that if my description of the sport is a bit off and doesn't make sense, that's probably why.   
> Done with the lame excuses. As always, thanks for reading. 
> 
> Jackie


	16. Accidental

“Tomorrow we will go back,” Shinoa said while she, Nishinoya and Mitsuba were watching Sugawara and Kageyama fight with their weapons again. It was helping them in figuring out their separate roles and the relationship between them, so Shinoa had said.

“Tomorrow?” Sugawara broke off and backed away from Kageyama to look at Shinoa. “You mean to that area?” he asked.

“Yes,” Shinoa said. “I was informed of it this morning.”

“What about it?” Mitsuba asked. “Except it’s good to know I don’t see why the information is relevant at the moment.”

“Because of this, we are finishing early today to go look at maps over the area,” Shinoa answered. “If we can find some good locations to look at, we will spend more time on looking there than at less relevant places.”

“I see,” Mitsuba muttered. “That makes a bit of sense.”

“When do we finish then?” Kageyama asked, also letting his weapons drop.

“Not before another hour has passed,” Shinoa answered. “So get back to work!” She smiled as she called out the last part and Sugawara and Kageyama pointed their weapons at one another once more.

“This is boring, why am I still here when I’m doing nothing!” Nishinoya yelled while lying back on the ground, frustrated that he couldn’t do anything. He was sick and tired of this, the crabby bow and the fact that he couldn’t use it because it was ‘dangerous’ and on top of that he had to watch the other two get to use their weapons. To him, it was more than a little frustrating.

“Remember what trouble you caused last time?” Shinoa said, reminding Nishinoya of what had happened when he ran off and Sugawara went after him and had run into Guren.

“Yeah, Yeah,” he sighed, not feeling any less frustrated.

“You do remind me a bit of Yuu,” Mitsuba said. “Maybe Sugawara could learn more from you.”

“I’m already trying to copy whatever I can,” Sugawara answered while his sword hit Kageyama’s twin-swords.

“Maybe you should copy from Sugawara-san too, Nishinoya-san,” Shinoa adviced.

“I wish I could do something more interesting at least!” Nishinoya yelled.

“What would you do then?” Mitsuba asked, only sounding half-interested.

“Something like this!” Nishinoya jumped up and grabbed Yoichi’s bow and took a position like he was about to shoot an arrow.

“Don’t!” Shinoa yelled. “Nishinoya-san!”

Kageyama and Sugawara both stopped fighting and turned around in time to see Nishinoya pull back the string. He was looking at a far corner, trying to take aim, but before he could, it seemed to fade away. There was a feel of an arrow, but it was only briefly and then that faded away too, with everything else.

“Nishinoya!” Sugawara had taken a few steps forward in an attempt to stop him, but Nishinoya collapsed before he could reach him.

“That’s why I told you not to use the demon powers in any way possible.” Shinoa said. “It’s dangerous.”

“Is he…?” Kageyama couldn’t even finish the question, he couldn’t say the word he knew both he and Sugawara were thinking. Neither of them were able to voice their worries about their teammate.

“Mi-chan, check and see,” Shinoa said. “Right now I do wish he had appeared as Yuu-san. It might even have made the names less confusing.”

Mitsuba moved as she was sitting beside Nishinoya and she checked his pulse. She then looked up with a look of relief expressed on her face. “I don’t know much about pulse and such but it seems steady to me.”

“That’s good,” Sugawara also sounded relieved now.

“Not for him. Once he wakes up I’m going to kick him,” Mitsuba said, standing up.

“Breathing, Mi-chan?” Shinoa asked.

“See for yourself,” Mitsuba said. “I’m gonna go kill my frustrations for a bit.” And as such, she left the room and slammed the door behind herself.

Shinoa, Sugawara and Kageyama all looked to Nishinoya and noted the rhythm his chest was rising and falling. It looked to be normal too.

“You two keep a slight distance,” Shinoa told the other two. “I don’t want you touching him since something could happen. If he wakes up and is not himself, I want you to leave this room.”

“Do you think he will wake up?” Sugawara asked.

“I have no clue,” Shinoa answered while sitting down beside Nishinoya. “But he has really done it, disrupting our practice like this.”

Sugawara and Kageyama exchanged looks and just by that, they both knew that they agreed with Shinoa’s statement. If Nishinoya woke up as himself again they would probably both end up scolding him.

* * *

 

Nishinoya woke up in a white world. He had absolutely no clue as to what this was and just sat up while attempting to figure it out. It clearly wasn’t his own world, nor was it the post-apocalyptic world he just came from. It could be a third world, but then where would this belong? It was completely empty. Was it a post-post-apocalyptic world? It wasn’t completely unlikely considering he had just come from another world that was different from his own. Had he swapped places with someone again? If so, how exactly was that other guy, Yoichi, supposed to get back?

Nishinoya looked behind him, and there he saw as another boy was also sitting up. He found that the hair color looked slightly familiar. There was something about the brown color and the hair-style that he recognized.

“Oi,” Nishinoya called while turning to the other boy. The other boy turned to look at him and in the same time an expression of recognition appeared on their faces. “You’re Saotome Yoichi, right?” Nishinoya stood up and walked to where the other was also standing up now.

“Yes, and you are Nishinoya-kun,” the other smiled as he said this, not as a question, just a statement.

“I’m that easy to recognize?” Nishinoya pretended to be surprised.

“I see your face in the mirror whenever I walk past one,” Yoichi said.

“I see your face in the mirror too,” Nishinoya said. “Do you know what this place is?” he then asked.

“It looks like Gekkouin’s world,” Yoichi said.

“Gekkouin?” Nishinoya asked.

“My demon, the one in my weapon,” Yoichi said. “You can use it?” he then asked.

“Not until just now. Shinoa won’t let me,” Nishinoya said.

Yoichi suddenly laughed. “It’s almost sad how you are not replacing Yuu-kun and he is not replacing you. It would have been a much better fit.”

“I’ve heard that twice already,” Nishinoya said. “Trust me, I’d rather be him! I mean, he has a sword and all that!”

“You would?” Yoichi asked, slightly surprised. “I actually don’t mind being you. There are things that are more difficult to do than others, bothering Shimizu-san so much is not really something I find easy to do and always being so loud is difficult too. But it’s not like they’re trades I dislike.”

Nishinoya couldn’t help but smile at this, he felt good from hearing Yoichi say these things about him. It felt like praise. “If you help me see something interesting about you, I might like you too,” he said.

Yoichi looked thoughtful as he ran through his mind of any of his own interesting trades. What would Nishinoya find interesting. “If Yuu-kun does something stupid I tend to tease him or correct him depending on the situation. Other than that…  I don’t know… If Yuu-kun and Kimizuki-kun are fighting, I’m usually the one to stop them.”

Nishinoya grinned. “Tease and split fights?” he asked, to which Yoichi nodded his head. “I haven’t tried that before, but it does sound fun.”

“Don’t overdo it, Nishinoya-kun,” Yoichi said.

“If you don’t mess up my life, I won’t mess up yours. I’ll stick to messing up Yuu’s life,” Nishinoya said.

“Yuu-kun’s life? How?” Yoichi asked.

And so Nishinoya had to explain everything that had happened when he had got Sugawara in trouble with Guren and while he was at it, he explained everything else he had experienced too. Yoichi sat and listened to all of it.

“So, Shinoa-san did remember that organization she told us about?” Yoichi asked. “I’m glad, that means we can solve the problem soon.”

“Yup, we’re going out tomorrow to figure out more,” Nishinoya answered. They were both sitting down beside each other now, staring into the whiteness of Gekkouin’s world.

“Nishinoya-kun, do you think you can finish this in about another week’s time?” Yoichi suddenly asked.

“Well, it should be possible,” Nishinoya answered. “Is something gonna happen in your world by then?” he asked.

“No, It’s just that Karasuno has a game against a school called Aoba Jousai. I think the others would like you three back by then…” Yoichi said as Nishinoya noticed how he was slowly turning more and more white, fading into the surrounding white color.

“You’re serious?” he asked.

“Yes,” Yoichi said. “Hurry back.” In the way he said it, Nishinoya could tell that he too had noticed that their time was up here.

“Yoichi! Say Hi to the others from me!” Nishinoya said before the white started fading to black and he was out of the white world.


	17. Just Relax

“What are we doing here? I thought I could sleep in for a change!” Yuu complained as he dragged himself after Daichi. They were on their way somewhere, but Yuu had absolutely no idea of where they were. All he knew was that this was practically in the middle of nowhere.

Daichi sighed. It wasn’t the first time Yuu had asked and not the first time he had given him the exact same answer. It wasn’t like it was going to change just because they had walked for another five seconds.

“I told you, we are going to meet up with the others,” he said.

“Yeah! But for what?” Yuu asked, sounding frustrated and irritated. It seemed that he too was tired of having the same conversation so often.

“You’ll figure it out once we get there,” Daichi said.

“You said that last time too,” Yuu muttered, still sounding irritated and frustrated.

“You are the one who keep asking the same questions,” Daichi answered, trying his hardest to hide his own irritation. He was somehow beginning to wish this problem would be fixed soon. He missed that things were normal. He missed how he wasn’t forced to drag some kid around who was beyond stupid. He missed how the team used to work before all this and he missed being alone too. It wasn’t like he disliked Yuu. He could sometimes be entertaining to have around and he, Yoichi and Kimizuki weren’t so bad people at all. It was just obvious that they didn’t belong here and still hadn’t completely adjusted to the peaceful world.

“Then… who exactly is going to be there?” Yuu asked in a much more quiet tone than what he had used before.

“Yoichi and Kimizuki of course, Tanaka, Hinata and Asahi are coming too.” Daichi said. “I haven’t heard anything from the others but they decide if they want to come or not.”

“And you still don’t want to tell me what we’re going to do?” Yuu asked.

“Yoichi and Kimizuki don’t know it either so I’m not telling you now because I don’t want to tell it twice,” Daichi said.

“It’s annoying!” Yuu exclaimed.

“We’ll be there within five minutes,” Daichi said. “The meeting place is just up ahead.”

They walked for another five minutes in silence and then arrived at the meeting place. Everyone else were there, to Yuu’s surprise, he found that there were more than just those Daichi had mentioned. He didn’t remember all their names, but if he were to take a guess he would say the entire team was there. He even noticed the blonde Kimizuki standing there with his green-haired friend.

“What is this?” Yuu asked.

“Yuu-kun!” Yoichi waved at Yuu from the spot on the grass where he and Kimizuki were sitting.

Yuu went up to sit with the two others and then looked around to find that everyone were looking at them, if not directly, then out of the corner of their eye. He wondered why this was while looking to Daichi.

“So, what is this?” he asked.

“We figured you needed some time to just be yourselves, as much as this world allows it, so we arranged this meeting out here, as far away from everyone as possible, without the risk of anyone finding us by accident. Then we just hope you don’t fall asleep at practice or in class again.” With this remark, he looked Yuu strictly in the eyes. Not only had Yuu fallen asleep at practice, but the day before he had actually fallen asleep in class as well. Luckily no one other than Daichi noticed this and because it was near the end, he could just wake him up after the class had ended and the teacher wouldn’t discover anything.

“It’s very thoughtful of you,” Yoichi said, politely.

“So, for how long will this last?” Kimizuki asked.

“Until it gets dark or until we don’t want to stay here anymore,” Daichi said.

“We should try and make the most of it then,” Yoichi said.

“Is there any food here?” Yuu asked.

“Tanaka-kun, Asahi-san and I brought some,” Yoichi said.

“Curry?” Yuu asked.

“I’m hungry!” Hinata complained.

“Then we should start by eating?” Asahi suggested while looking at Daichi who nodded in approval.

Tanaka, Asahi and Yoichi had brought a box full of different types of buns, more than enough for them to get two each. Yuu had two with curry and was thereby satisfied.

While they were eating, they were sitting and talking in smaller groups. Yuu had sat down beside Hinata but had also accidentally placed himself close by Tsukishima who was teasing both of them from time to time. Kimizuki was speaking to Daichi and Asahi and Yoichi was talking to Tanaka and the three other second years.

It was while they were eating like this when Tanaka suddenly yelled out:

“Yoichi! What’s going on?”

Everyone looked to where they were sitting. Yoichi was lying in the grass, eyes closed and with a half-finished bun in one hand. It would have been easy to believe that he was asleep if it wasn’t for the fact that Yoichi didn’t just fall asleep like that.

“It’s not normal,” Kimizuki decided. “It looks like when you are about to make a contract with a demon.”

Yuu suddenly started looking serious. “Do we have connection to our demons? But I haven’t seen Asuramaru here at all!”

“Do you think I’ve seen Kiseki Oo?” Kimizuki asked. “If it turns out I’m right, then I have no clue of how we are to defend ourselves if something happens.”

“What’s this about?” Daichi asked.

“If Yoichi loses the battle like the first time, then what do we do?” Kimizuki asked while looking around for an ideal weapon. Yuu did the same. His eyes landed on the two bicycles Kimizuki and Hinata had used to get there.

“What about them?” he asked.

“You might actually be smart at times,” Kimizuki said, slightly irritated that he hadn’t thought of that. Then again, bicycles weren’t exactly the best choice of weapons against a demon with bow and arrow.

“Oi! What’s going on!” Daichi yelled, finally getting through to Yuu and Kimizuki.

“In our world, we use a specific type of weapons with a demon curse in them,” Kimizuki explained. “Yuu, Yoichi and I all have one. There is a risk that it will possess us. If that happens, we are completely out of control. If our demons have a connection to us while we are in this world, then it could be Yoichi and his demon is communicating now. If that goes wrong, it might possess him.” Kimizuki explained.

“And we have no way of defending?” Daichi asked, just to confirm.

“Yuu and I don’t have our weapons, so no.” Kimizuki said.

“But it’s not normal for Yoichi to pass out like this because of the demon,” Yuu said.

Kimizuki nodded his head. “You’re right.” He said. “Aside from the first time, there has been no problem with their connection.”

“But since your weapons aren’t here, and the demons are in them, don’t you think they are in your world?” Asahi asked.

“If that’s the case, then won’t the problem be over there?” Tanaka wondered.

“Probably?” Yuu looked to Kimizuki.

“How would I know?” Kimizuki asked, looking back at Yuu. “But then… one of the others must have screwed up.”

“That… Najikawa-guy?” Yuu asked.

“Don’t speak right now. You’re letting stupid words out,” Kimizuki said.

“What?” Yuu asked.

“Let’s just stay away from Yoichi for a bit and wait until he wakes up. Then we can take action,” Daichi said. With these words, everyone walked a little bit away from Yoichi, as they wouldn’t get hurt in case something unnatural happened. For the next hour, Yuu and Kimizuki weren’t able to relax at all.


	18. Maps

When Nishinoya woke up again he was met with a glare from two copper eyes in a young girl’s face. He smiled, knowing he had screwed up and made Shinoa angry and probably worried too. He wondered how everyone else were feeling at the moment.

“Nishinoya-san,” Shinoa said, her voice not matching the look in her eyes. There was no anger in her voice, only worry and concern.

“Am I having a girl worry about me?” Nishinoya asked, unable to suppress the laugh that came after.

“Be serious, Nishinoya,” he heard Sugawara say. Nishinoya was sure that unlike Shinoa, Sugawara was only worried and concerned, and not as much angry, at least not now.

“How are you feeling?” Shinoa asked.

“Fine,” Nishinoya sat up and smiled at Shinoa, Sugawara and Kageyama. He couldn’t see Mitsuba in the room. He vaguely wondered about where she was but was more concentrated about the other three who were there.

“Did something happen while you were out?” Shinoa asked. “Did you see someone, meet someone?”

“Yeah,” Nishinoya still kept on smiling.

“Nishinoya, stop smiling and be serious!” Sugawara complained.

“What did you see and who did you meet?” Shinoa asked “No, do you feel like doing something, like attacking us or something?”

“No, I don’t,” Nishinoya said. “Why would I?” he asked.

Shinoa seemed to relax them, finally. “Don’t do this again,” she said. “You had us all worried. Mi-chan has already come and gone twice while you were out! She is probably gonna kick you to the end of Shibuya and back before she feels like she’s done with you.”

“Was she that worried?” Nishinoya asked.

“We were all worried,” Shinoa said. “You could have died!”

Nishinoya wasn’t going to deny that. He had been told this before, he vaguely remembered this. He didn’t remember exactly when, but probably shortly after they had found the weapons. Now that he thought about it, Shinoa had said this because Sugawara had suggested that they swapped weapons because he would rather have the bow and Nishinoya would rather have the sword. And while he was thinking about the things he would have rather wanted before, he remembered Shinoa’s question from a little while ago.

“Did you want to know what I saw and who I met?” he asked.

Shinoa looked over. “You met Gekkouin right?” she asked.

“No, I was just in its world, a completely white place. I met Yoichi!” Nishinoya smiled as Shinoa’s face lit up with surprise and a slight hint of joy.

“Did he say anything interesting?” she asked.

“They also figured that it might be that organization who is trying to find a way to undo the apocalypse.” Nishinoya started, only now wiping off the smile slightly. “He also told me a bit about himself and told me that he liked me, so I figured that I like him too,” at this, the smile returned and Shinoa smiled too.

“He was also Yuu-san’s first friend,” she said.

“What about our team, are they doing okay?” Sugawara asked.

“No…” Nishinoya said. “I spent all the time explaining what we’d been up to while he just listened. All he said was that…” Nishinoya straightened up as he remembered. “We need to finish this within another week!” he exclaimed.

“Why?” Kageyama asked, half trying to seem uninterested while it not really working.

“Because we have a practice game against Aoba Jousai,” Nishinoya said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not about to let the team go through that without a proper libero on their side!”

Sugawara nodded his head. “I agree we should do our best to get back then. I trust that Yuu and Kimizuki are trying to do as best as they can to learn how to toss, but I am not about to let our team play without a good setter on their side.” He looked to Kageyama as he said this. “We need someone who can go up against Oikawa too, you know.”

Kageyama nodded his head with a determined look, agreeing with Sugawara’s words.

“Then, let’s get going,” Mitsuba had entered the room while the three boys were busy talking about the reason to go back quickly. “Our time in this room is up and we need to go look at maps anyway.”

“Mi-chan’s here!” Shinoa sang as she danced up to the door where Mitsuba was standing. Nishinoya, Sugawara and Kageyama picked up their respective weapons and followed the two girls to the library.

* * *

 

“Here!” Shinoa laid out two different maps on the table and the other four gathered around to take a look at them. They didn’t look much similar except the fact that they appeared to cover the same area.

“We will be patrolling here,” Shinoa said as she let her finger trace an area about the middle of the map. She kept tracing the area until she was sure everyone had got it. “I think where it happened was about here,” she pointed to the middle of a street on one of the maps and pointed to the same point on the other map too.

“Excuse me, but what are these two maps supposed to show?” Sugawara asked.

“One is of the streets and another is of the underground,” Shinoa answered. “We will primarily need the streets but we might be in need of the underground too.”

“We’ve got a lot of ground to cover,” Kageyama said.

“We sure do,” Nishinoya answered while looking down at the maps.

“You’re right,” Shinoa said.

“If we were there, shouldn’t we look somewhere nearby?” Sugawara pointed out the spot where they had appeared as he spoke.

“It is more likely that they are operating from somewhere close by there,” Shinoa said.

“Then don’t we just need to look around there?” Nishinoya asked.

“That would be the easy way,” Mitsuba said. “But they could be operating from somewhere else. I think that’s what Shinoa’s trying to say.”

“Mi-chan’s exactly right!” Shinoa exclaimed.

“Then, where would likely areas be?” Sugawara asked.

“That’s a tough question,” Shinoa seemed to look thoughtful while she looked over the maps. “Anywhere where the streets and the underground cross paths I guess would be useful. Since the light came from below I suppose we should look for some place with connection to there.”

“Is it possible to make a copy of the maps we can mark it on then?” Mitsuba asked.

“Are you asking me of that?” Shinoa asked. “I can’t do that, Mi-chan. Can you?”

“No way!” Mitsuba exclaimed.

“It shouldn’t be more difficult than a basic geography class,” Sugawara said. “The three of us should be able to pull it off,” he looked between Nishinoya and Kageyama as he spoke. Both looked a bit unsure, but ended up nodding their heads. It wasn’t entirely impossible for them.

Shinoa went for paper and a black, a red and a blue marker. Sugawara, Nishinoya and Kageyama copied the two different maps into one map, marking the streets with blue and the underground with red. Then they marked the places where they crossed with blue and showed it to Shinoa and Mitsuba.

“This does make it easier,” Shinoa smiled while she looked at the single map the three boys had made. “We will bring this for tomorrow and check all the areas closest to this spot,” she pointed to the spot where the swapping had happened, which Sugawara had marked with a tiny blue star as it was easy to find.

“The closer we get, the more thoroughly we need to look, right?” Mitsuba asked while looking at Shinoa.

“Yes,” Shinoa said. “Mi-chan’s right. If the three of you hear, see or feel anything different at a certain spot, then let us know right away. We can’t let anything strange go by before we know what it is,” Shinoa said.

With this, they broke up for the day. There was nothing more they could discuss as they now felt like they were completely prepared for tomorrow’s search for an organization that didn’t want to be found.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, thank you for reading this story so far and since it's the last day of 2016 at the publishing date of this chapter, happy new year!  
> It's been my first year on this website and it's not always so easy to start up on a new site but I think this year has been fine. I hope those of you who have read my works published during this year will continue to read my works through next year as well. 
> 
> Jackie


	19. Tension

After spending an hour with the air thick with tension and almost not a single word exchanged between anyone, something finally happened. It started by the half-eaten bun falling out of Yoichi’s hand. The next thing that happened was his eyes opening.

“Yoichi?” Yuu walked closer. Tanaka and Asahi were about to follow him. But Kimizuki stretched out an arm and stopped them from walking any further.

“We don’t know anything yet,” he said while eying the two briefly before he looked back to Yuu and Yoichi.

“Yuu-kun,” Yoichi sat up and looked down at the bun in the grass. “That’s a waste of food,” he said.

“You seem normal,” Yuu answered, sounding relieved.

“I feel normal,” Yoichi answered. “I didn’t meet Gekkouin either. It was actually different from any other time I’ve spoken to them.”

“If you didn’t speak to your demon, how come you passed out?” Yuu asked, sitting down beside Yoichi.

“It was Nishinoya-kun’s fault, apparently,” Yoichi answered.

“Nishinoya?” Daichi wondered.

“Yeah,” Yoichi answered. “He… he activated Gekkouin and had both of us sucked into their world. Nishinoya-kun and I then spent some time talking.”

“I won’t mind trying that out,” Yuu said.

“That probably won’t happen, Yuu-kun,” Yoichi said. “Kimizuki-kun, I think you can let down your guard.”

Kimizuki nodded his head and went to approach Yoichi and sit down on his other side. All the official members of Karasuno’s volleyball team went to sit close by them as well.

“I know we were told about your weapons just now,” Asahi said. “But actually, I don’t think we know anything else about the world you come from.”

“Is it similar to ours in any way?” Hinata asked.

“I think it used to be,” Yuu said. “I don’t remember much other than my home, the orphanage and then the vampire city…”

“You never went outside?” Tanaka asked.

“Our world used to look like this one… I think,” Yoichi said before looking to Kimizuki.

“It did. There might have been a few differences, but the world ended eight years ago, that’s when we were eight years old, so there’s nothing to remember from then.”

“How did the world end?” Tanaka asked.

“A virus spread and killed almost everyone. Only one tenth of the human population survived,” Kimizuki explained.

“What sorts of differences were there?” Daichi asked.

“Vampires,” Yuu spat out the word as if it gave him a bad taste in his mouth. “It’s probably all their fault.”

“Aren’t you the one who has a friend amongst them?” Kimizuki asked.

“He’s family,” Yuu argued. “And we knew each other before he became a vampire!”

“So it’s a post-apocalyptic world?” Daichi asked. “With vampires and demons?”

“And other things too,” Kimizuki said.

“Will they be okay?” Asahi wondered, thinking about Sugawara, Kageyama and Nishinoya.

“Nishinoya-kun seemed fine, and I think the others are fine too. Our friends are helping them along.” Yoichi answered.

“Do you know if they fought any of those things yet?” Hinata asked, leaning forward.

Yoichi thought back. “I think Nishinoya-kun said they were close to a fourth horseman of John on the first day but aside from that, he didn’t tell me if there had been anything else. They were going back out on patrol tomorrow though.”

“So they are staying somewhere safe or what?” Daichi asked. “Or have they just been lucky?”

“It’s safe within the secured areas where we normally stay.” Kimizuki said.

“The only things to worry about are when a vampire breaks lose, someone is possessed, or when you get in trouble.” Yuu explained.

“Yuu-kun has had his share of the last.” Yoichi said with an amused smile.

“And there’s more coming his way,” Kimizuki added.

“What else did Noya-san say?” Tanaka asked.

“Not much more,” Yoichi said. “Sugawara-san got in trouble because of him it seems, and they are working on finding a way back as soon as possible.”

“That doesn’t sound right!” Yuu exclaimed. “Daichi told me not to get in trouble because that… Sugawara almost never did that.”

“I think Nishinoya-kun said he accidentally met Guren.” Yoichi said.

Yuu looked like he had swallowed the half bun that was lying in the grass and had been lying there for a while now. “Is he still alive?” he asked.

“Who is Guren?” Hinata asked. “What’s he like?”

“Like Daichi in a way, but worse, much worse,” Yuu explained. “He is mean and stupid. He brought me to the demon army after I escaped the vampire city.”

“He cares about you, Yuu-kun,” Yoichi said. “Wasn’t he the one who told you to get a friend before you could join the moon demon company?”

“That’s him, that jerk…” Yuu muttered.

“I’m not so worried about that as I’m worried about what Shinoa and Mitsuba did to them afterwards,” Kimizuki stated.

“And what they’ll probably do to Nishinoya-kun once they get over their worry,” Yoichi said with a smile.

“At least they seem to be okay,” Asahi said.

“Are there no more buns?” Yuu asked. “I’d like another one with curry!”

“We’re out,” Tanaka informed.

“The sun is hanging low too,” Daichi said. “We should go back.”

And so everyone stood and started heading their separate ways. Hinata went to his bike and Kimizuki got the one he had borrowed and they rode them back to Hinata’s place. Everyone else was heading the opposite direction so they all walked together.

Despite what had happened to Yoichi, everyone had actually found that they had had a good time with each other. Yuu, Yoichi and Kimizuki had gotten to be themselves and had time when they didn’t need to act like they were someone else.

A handful of the members of Karasuno’s volleyball team had noticed how the three ‘strangers’ had seemed to relax and now they were hoping, and Daichi especially, that the three could last for another week without slipping up as much. And then hopefully this problem would be fixed before the game in a week’s time. It probably wouldn’t be a total loss in the practice game, but as long as Yuu, Yoichi and Kimizuki were on the team, everyone knew it wouldn’t be a win either. And no matter the result, everyone knew they would be seen through if Yuu, Yoichi or Kimizuki played.


	20. Searching For...

They were currently walking through an area with relatively tall buildings on either side of the road. Shinoa and Mitsuba were leading the way while the three volleyball players were walking behind them. They were all keeping their eyes out for hiding places except Shinoa who had her eyes glued to the map.

“Is it just me or are we walking in circles?” Nishinoya asked.

“Hmm…” Sugawara thought. “We might be, but I don’t think I’d be able to tell. All the buildings look the same to me.”

“Am I hearing complaints back there?” Shinoa asked irritated.

“We were just discussing how the surroundings seem to look the same and whether we are walking in circles or if this is just the way it looks,” Sugawara explained.

“It’s different,” Kageyama said.

“What makes you say that?” Nishinoya asked.

“Don’t know. Why is it the same?” Kageyama asked.

Nishinoya looked around. “Everything looks the same,” he answered.

“We are not the same place,” Shinoa said in a harsh tone. “It’s about time we start looking more closely at our surroundings though.”

“We are getting closer to the center of attention,” Mitsuba agreed. “Maybe I should take the map though.”

“Are you qualified?” Shinoa asked, now a smirk was playing on her lips and her eyes looked like she was about to get entertained.

“Of course I’m qualified. What kind of qualification do you need to hold a map?” Mitsuba asked.

“Are you saying you don’t have confidence in my sense of direction?” Shinoa asked.

“I’m saying I have more confidence in my own,” Mitsuba answered. Now she was getting slightly irritated while Shinoa continued to grow more amused.

Shinoa let it slide though, seeing as Mitsuba was getting angry from looking at her smirking face and she handed the map to her.

“So Mitsuba can complain but we are not allowed to?” Nishinoya asked.

“I expect complete obedience from you. I know Mi-chan is gonna rebel against me,” Shinoa answered.

“What kind of crazy person is she?” Nishonoya whispered, loud enough for Shinoa to hear. She didn’t comment on it, but something in her facial expression told them that she would remember that remark.

“Let’s move on!” she just said as she continued to lead the way. Mitsuba quickly followed with the map and Sugawara, Nishinoya and Kageyama went after them.

They had already been looking around for about an hour, spending all this time covering the less important areas of the district they were supposed to look through to find that underground spell organization. After they had started looking more closely it took them about another hour to cover half as much ground as they had at first. But of course, they were looking through these areas more thoroughly than the less important ones.

“I’m tired of searching…” Nishinoya said after a while.

“It’s called endurance,” Kageyama said.

“We have been looking for a while now though,” Sugawara said. “All I can say is that we just have to keep on looking until we find them, at least if the girls think so…” as he said this, he looked in the direction of where Mitsuba and Shinoa were standing, looking at the map and discussing which way to go. They had been at that for five minutes and the boys had simply withdrawn from the fight, knowing that they would get in trouble with at least one of the girls if they got involved, and by now they had learned that getting in trouble with either girl could end up badly for them.

“It should be over soon,” Kageyama said. “I think I recognize this area.”

“Are we walking in circles again!” Nishinoya exclaimed out in disbelief.

“We were never walking in circles,” Kageyama defended.

“You mean… this is somewhere close by the place where we arrived?” Sugawara asked.

“Yeah,” Kageyama said, seeming relieved that at least one understood what he was talking about.

Nishinoya glanced over at the girls, briefly. “Is it worth getting involved with them to tell them?” he asked.

Sugawara looked over too. “It’s worth a shot. What’s the worst that can happen?” he pulled on a smile as he spoke.

“You might end up dying.” Nishinoya said, sounding serious.

“Maybe,” Sugawara shrugged it off. “How’s your back?” he asked instead, to which Nishinoya simply put up a face like he was in pain.

On the night before, after they had finished with the mapping, Mitsuba and Shinoa had taken the time to yell at Nishinoya for being careless enough to activate the demon within Yoichi’s bow. Nishinoya had kept on defending himself until Mitsuba had had enough of him and given him a kick in the back. Nishinoya had had trouble lying on his back all night, so he had said anyways, and if you asked him, he would swear there would be a clear mark of where Mitsuba’s boot had hit him for the next two weeks. Sugawara and Kageyama didn’t believe it would last that long. If they had to take a guess, it would probably last a week at max and would probably stop being sore for the next couple of days.

“Sometimes I don’t get how you can be so nice and so evil in the same time.” Nishinoya said.

Sugawara only smiled before looking back at the girls to see that Kageyama was now standing close by them, listening to their conversation which was still regarding the map and which direction to go.

“We know where we are,” Kageyama said.

“So do we,” Mitsuba snapped.

“We are close by where we appeared when arriving in this world.” Kageyama stated.

This seemed to catch both Shinoa and Mitsuba off guard and then both of them got busy looking down at the map to find the location marked there. Shinoa pointed to their position and traced a line from there to the marked spot. She nodded her head and looked up at Kageyama.

“You’re right, Kageyama-san,” she said. She then looked to Mitsuba. “Should we go there then, Mi-chan?” she asked.

Mitsuba seemed to think about it before nodding her head. “I think it’s worth it, even if we haven’t looked through the surrounding areas yet.”

“Nishinoya-san! Sugawara-san!” Shinoa called and Sugawara and Nishinoya came over, already knowing what she was going to say. “We are heading here since we are close by.” Shinoa pointed the marked spot out on the map and both Sugawara and Nishinoya nodded their heads, showing their approval.

They walked in silence and then reached the area. Everyone seemed a bit more tense as they were looking through the area and searching for anything that might give them a clue on where the organization was hiding. However, they didn’t seem to find anything.

“Hey, Shinoa,” Mitsuba asked quietly. “Are we sure it’s even here?”

Shinoa looked around, noting that Sugawara, Kageyama and Nishinoya were all far enough away that they wouldn’t hear what they were discussing.

“We’re not,” she said. “I’m just keeping hope alive. I hope we will find the organization as things can all go back to normal.”

“Have you given up hope?” Mitsuba asked, not seeming ready to believe that Shinoa would give up hope.

“Me? No way!” Shinoa said with a wide smile. “From what Nishinoya-san said after speaking to Yoichi-san, I believe that he, Yuu-san and Kimizuki-san all have faith in us and believe that we can solve it. I’m sure Sugawara-san, Kageyama-san, Nishinoya-san and their team believe in us too. We kind of have to solve this and believe in ourselves too.”

“When you say it like that, I have to have faith in us too,” Mitsuba muttered.

“Exactly, so don’t lose hope now, Mi-chan,” Shinoa answered with a smirk.

“Have you guys found anything?” Nishinoya called suddenly from where he was searching, a little further away from the others.

“No entrance here,” Sugawara said.

“What about a secret one?” Kageyama asked.

“Checked for that too,” Sugawara answered.

“We have a negative too,” Shinoa said, turning to them. Mitsuba did the same thing, but she looked to Shinoa when she spoke.

“Shinoa, it’s getting dark. Maybe we should call it off for today,” she said.

Shinoa looked around on the road and noticed that it had indeed grown darker. She nodded her head. In the dark, it would be harder to see what was coming at them, and with the three boys, who still didn’t belong in this world, it would be safer to go back. She didn’t want a repeat of what had happened last time they were out.

“We’re heading back.” Shinoa said. “We will continue the search next time we can get to go on patrol.” She said.

Nishinoya, Kageyama and Sugawara all seemed to agree that this was a good idea and the little group started heading back towards safety.


	21. Intelligence

The ball was dropping. It had been on its way over the net and now it was dropping. Yuu was watching it, hoping it hit the floor. Asahi had made the serve. Now the ball was on the opposite half of the court.

“Alright!” Yoichi yelled, simulating Nishinoya as best as he could. The ball hit his hands, close by the wrists and it went up easily.

Kimizuki got busy moving to where the ball’s new dropping point was. He stood underneath and raised his hands to make the toss. Hinata was already on his way, racing to the right side at what seemed to be at the speed of light.

Yuu looked at the ones on his side of the net to see if they were reacting. He had been playing against Hinata enough that he would know that he would act as decoy from time to time. That meant you had to keep your eye on the other players too. At first it had been difficult to keep your eyes away from the fast moving redhead, but Yoichi had once told Yuu to think of it as being attacked by more than one vampire. That had sort of helped. Now Yuu could at least think far enough as to keep his attention on all players instead of just the one taking the spotlight.

Watching his teammates, Yuu noticed that Tsukishima and Asahi were reacting. He ran over to where Hinata was at to jump up with the others but Tsukishima shook his head. Yuu didn’t understand why and therefore he just suddenly stopped and went back to watching the ball as it went to the left where Tanaka had also jumped up. He wanted to run to block but it was too late. Luckily Daichi was there to receive the ball and it went up. Yuu wasted no time as he quickly tried to locate the dropping point of the ball and went to make a toss from there.

As he stopped under the ball and raised his hands, Yuu wondered who to toss to. He would rather toss to Asahi because they got along well. Daichi was out of the picture because he’d received, he hadn’t tried tossing to anyone else except Tsukishima once. He didn’t like that guy though. But he had tossed to Asahi almost all the way throughout the entire game and he had already been blocked a large number of times by now.

Although he would never say it out loud, Yuu knew he wasn’t always that smart, but he sometimes had moments when he became intelligent. Apparently this time was one of them. If it hadn’t been, he would have probably tossed to Asahi again, but he decided against that and as the ball hit his fingertips, he pushed it up in the direction of where Tsukishima was standing.

This caught the Kimizuki-copy off guard, but thankfully, he managed to react in time to send the ball across the net and scoring another point for them.

As the ball hit the ground, the coach named Ukai blew the whistle and marked the end of the game and today’s training.

* * *

 

“What were you doing?” Kimizuki asked. He, Yuu and Yoichi were standing outside the gym. They had finished cleaning up and were all now ready to go. Today was the last day before the practice game they had against the school, which name Yuu had forgotten.

“What do you mean?” Yuu asked.

“That last play,” Kimizuki said. “You didn’t look like yourself.”

“Are you starting to see through the filter too?” Yoichi asked, sounding slightly concerned.

“Don’t pretend you didn’t notice too, Yoichi,” Kimizuki said before he spoke to Yuu again. “You looked like you were actually thinking.”

“Now that you mention it, I did notice that too,” Yoichi agreed. “What was that, Yuu-kun?”

“I… That’s because I was thinking!” Yuu exclaimed.

“Come again?” Kimizuki asked, not believing he had heard that right.

“I never knew it was possible for one to think so much in such a short time!” Yuu said. “I mean, I almost planned out the entire attack… or so it felt like. I managed to rule out all my options of who to send the toss to and make up my mind.”

“Now if this could just be brought back to our world, that wouldn’t be so bad,” Kimizuki stated.

Yoichi chuckled. “That’s true,” he agreed.

They were all silent for a bit before Yoichi spoke up again.

“Do you think they’ll be able to fix it before the game tomorrow?” he asked.

“Who knows…” Kimizuki muttered. “The game is late in the afternoon, so maybe.”

“They’ll fix it! I know they will!” Yuu smiled confidently. “We have a guy with brains replacing me so it’ll be fine!”

“Time to go home!” Daichi called from a little further away. Hinata was already on his way to get his bike while looking over his shoulder at Kimizuki. Tanaka was standing with Daichi and watching them. Kimizuki, Yuu and Yoichi got busy walking up to them and then they said their goodbyes and went their separate ways.

While Yuu was walking with Daichi he thought of how the last week had been. He admitted there had been both ups and downs. He had managed to argue with Kimizuki once or twice, but it had occurred way less often than the first week. He had also gotten better at school. In Japanese he had managed to actually write down some notes of his own. But where he, Yoichi and Kimizuki had improved the most, without a doubt, was in volleyball. Everybody knew that they hadn’t reached the level of the players they were replacing but they had managed to learn the basics of volleyball at least.

“Receive,” Daichi suddenly said, breaking the silence.

“What?” Yuu asked, not understanding what he meant at first.

“Receive,” Daichi repeated.

“R-E-C-E-I-V-E,” Yuu spelled, now understanding what the other meant.

“Memorize,” Daichi said now.

“M-E-M-O-R-I…” Yuu hesitated while thinking. “Z-E.” he finished.

“Intelligence,” Daichi said then.

“I-N-T-E-L-I-G-E-N-S-E,” Yuu spelled and Daichi frowned.

“It’s two l’s and a c instead of an s,” he said and then paused before he spoke again, changing the subject. “You may not be able to spell it, but you actually seem to possess some of it.” He said.

“Huh?” Yuu asked. “I don’t think anyone has ever said that to me before, not you, not Kimizuki, not stupid Guren either.”

“Yeah, you are not the smartest one I know, when it comes to education at least. But you do have some sense inside that causes you to act intelligently at times.” He said.

“I don’t get it. Are you saying I’m smart or not?” Yuu asked.

Daichi thought. “Both,” he decided. “There are different types of intelligence. There is the one you gain through education and the one you gain through experience, just as examples. You have gained some of the former, but you are still lacking it, but in the world you come from, I suppose it’s not used a lot. But you do seem to have some of the latter, and more than some people I know. You revealed that in the last play today.”

“Kimizuki and Yoichi did say it looked like I was thinking.” Yuu said.

“Because you were. You were putting your intelligence to use.” Daichi said. “I hope you’ll remember how that feels if you return to your own world.” He said.

“Are you losing faith in them?” Yuu asked.

Daichi turned his head to look at Yuu. “Of course not,” he said, but then he didn’t seem so certain. “At least not yet.”

“I’m never losing faith!” Yuu exclaimed.

“Of course you aren’t,” Daichi answered, smiling at the cheerful energy Yuu was displaying. If the others ever managed to find a way to undo this, this energy was definitely something Daichi would miss.


	22. No Intention

After the first failed attempt at finding that organization that were responsible for the swapping, Shinoa had arranged for one more time that they could go out. Almost a week had passed since the first time they’d been out there.

“But haven’t we searched everywhere?” Nishinoya asked the night before they were supposed to go, when Shinoa told them about the plan.

“We skipped a few areas and I’m worried we didn’t search the most important area thoroughly enough,” Shinoa replied.

“It did get a little too dark before we could finish,” Mitsuba agreed.

“I wish we had gotten to go back a bit sooner though,” Sugawara said.

“That would have been the best,” Shinoa agreed. “But this was the earliest time I could get, and then Guren started asking questions, saying we had been on patrol in that area a lot.”

“Do you think he suspects us?” Kageyama asked.

“I think he has been suspecting us for a while,” Sugawara answered.

“That’s why, the sooner we can bring things back to normal, the better,” Shinoa said.

* * *

 

The following day they had agreed to meet up early. Sugawara woke up even earlier than he had intended and quickly learned that more sleep was impossible. He had an uneasy feeling about today, as if something bad would happen if something wasn’t done. He spent some time lying in bed, thinking about what could happen, but when he discovered his mind was running in circles, he decided to get up and get to think about something else. Maybe he should go practice using that sword just one more time.

He got out of bed and got dressed quickly before he went to check his reflection in the mirror, like he had done every morning for the past two weeks. He remembered that he had been worried about Nishinoya and Kageyama not checking their own reflections on the first morning. Today, it was a different worry that hit him. He wondered if Yuu was checking his reflection to make sure he looked the same every day. How much could his life have changed by now?

“No use thinking about that.” Sugawara told himself as he made sure he was looking okay before he went to get Yuu’s sword and left the room to head downstairs and outside. He had learned that there was an area behind the building where almost no one came and it was a pretty good place to practice swinging a sword.

Sugawara was on his way over there. Went down the stairs and went to the bottom floor and headed out the door. He turned right and then he suddenly stopped as he saw someone push themselves off the wall and looking at him with purple eyes.

“What are you doing here?” Sugawara asked, falling into his role.

“What’s with that? Weren’t you the one showing up at my office the other day?” Guren asked, sharply.

“It was a coincidence, stupid Guren,” Sugawara shot back while trying to look as serious as he could.

“Whatever,” Guren turned to stand with his back to the building Sugawara had just come out from. He didn’t say a word for a little while and Sugawara didn’t either, until he decided they had been silent for long enough. He didn’t like that Guren was there. If he could somehow make him leave it would all be good.

“Are you gonna leave?” he asked, knowing he would have to be expressing Yuu’s, and his own, exact thoughts in the most simplified way possible.

“No, I wanted to tell you something,” Guren answered while leaning back against the wall.

“What?” Sugawara asked, feeling curious as to what Guren wanted to tell him. He had a feeling it would be something relevant, not just for Yuu or him, but probably for everyone on Shinoa’s squad.

“Can you recall back to when I last spoke with Shinoa?” Guren asked.

“That was yesterday,” Sugawara answered, even if he had an idea that this wasn’t the time Guren was talking about.

“She told you that?” Guren sounded a little surprised, but let it slide. “The last time before we saw each other last. Do you follow?” he asked.

Sugawara pretended to think before he nodded his head. “What about it?” he asked.

“Did she tell you that there had been strange activity in the area where you had been patrolling?” Guren asked.

“Now that I think about it… she did mention it,” Sugawara answered while putting a thoughtful look on his face.

“I was concerned because it might not be so safe to be there while the activity is so high, but it seems to have decreased over the past two weeks. It might be disappearing soon, so it should be safe to go there by now,” Guren said.

“Are you saying you were worried?” Sugawara intentionally raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t get the wrong idea,” Guren answered before pushing off the wall again. “I’ll get going, seeing as you still seem eager for me to leave,” he said. He turned his back to Sugawara and started walking off, but before he had taken more than five steps, he stopped and turned his head.

“If I were you, I would try to fix my problems as soon as possible,” he said over his shoulder before walking on.

Sugawara let that sink in and had the clues fall into place before he thought up his response. “What are you talking about, stupid Guren!” he yelled, but Guren only raised a hand to goodbye before he turned the nearest corner and was out of sight.

Not feeling like practicing anymore, Sugawara simply leaned his back against the wall, right at the spot where Guren had been standing just a few minutes ago. He needed to figure out something they could do. He was still thinking as Mitsuba and Shinoa showed up and stopped to stare at him.

“Now that’s a rare sight,” Shinoa commented sarcastically.

“What is?” Sugawara looked up, still trying to play his role.

“Yuu-san’s thinking hard,” Shinoa said.

“Guren mentioned something, I think it was important,” Sugawara answered while trying to sound more stupid than he was.

Shinoa got a concerned look on her face. “Tell us about it when we go on patrol,” she said. “I’m sure we’d all like to hear it as we can figure out what Guren actually told you.”

They were waiting around in silence for a bit. They had planned to meet at eight and now the time was approaching. Once the clock struck eight, Kageyama exited the building. As he did, one in the army’s uniform passed by and he sent Sugawara an irritated glare for good measure and Sugawara sent one back for the same reason.

“Shouldn’t Yoichi be here?” Kageyama asked after looking around.

“He hasn’t been very punctual as of late,” Shinoa said. “But you’re right.”

It was true what she said. Nishinoya hadn’t been very good at being punctual, but in most cases he hadn’t been more than a few minutes late. The worst case was still the first day when he ended up oversleeping. Now Sugawara wondered if he had overslept again.

“Think he overslept?” It wasn’t Sugawara who asked, but Mitsuba.

“Could be,” Shinoa answered. “We should go check on him.”

They all headed inside the building, but didn’t get further than to the bottom of the stairs before Nishinoya came rushing down, hitting Shinoa as he reached the bottom of the stairs too and they both fell over.

“Sorry I’m late!” Nishinoya yelled.

“You’re loud, Yoichi-san,” Shinoa said.

“I overslept and hurried here!” Nishinoya answered, not decreasing the volume by much.

“Glad you’re here, do you mind getting off?” Shinoa asked.

Nishinoya, who had fallen on top of Shinoa, hurried to get off and even bothered to apologize before he stood and even offered her a hand to get up. Shinoa didn’t accept it though but chose to get up on her own.

“Now, let’s get going, we have a long day ahead of us,” she said with a smile that none of the boys were able to interpret. Then she walked outside the building with Sugawara, Nishinoya, Kageyama and Mitsuba following behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm currently working without my zooming program because it shut down suddenly. This is way tougher than I thought it'd be, but at least, now I know what the full screen looks like.   
> Thanks for reading. We're almost at the end. 
> 
> Jackie


	23. Right There

They reached the area where they were to patrol without anyone saying a single word. Shinoa was walking ahead in a fast pace while the others were just following her. No one seemed to mind the silence. However, it ended once Shinoa stopped and turned around, looking directly at Sugawara, causing him to stop as well. When the others noticed that two had stopped, they stopped too.

“What did Guren tell you?” she asked.

“You met Guren again?” Nishinoya asked, looking at Sugawara.

“Yeah,” Sugawara said. “We talked for a bit.”

“He didn’t ask you any questions?” Kageyama asked.

“No. But I don’t think we’re fooling him,” Sugawara answered.

“What do you mean by that?” Mitsuba asked, not entirely sure of what to make of what Sugawara had just said.

“It felt like we were both acting. It might be the same way it feels for little girls when they are playing house.” Sugawara tried to explain.

“Enough about that,” Shinoa said, bringing the other four back on track. “What did he say? You talked about a warning.”

“He said that the strange activity has been decreasing over the past two weeks,” Sugawara said. “I think it started and was at its highest when we swapped places, and now it has almost disappeared.”

“Is that something to worry about?” Mitsuba asked.

“It wouldn’t have been if he hadn’t told me to take care of my problems as soon as possible,” Sugawara answered. “I don’t think he was just referring to me, but to all of us. If the strange activity disappears then chances are we might not be able to get back. In other words, we’re running out of time.”

“And you’re telling us now?” Nishinoya exclaimed.

“I was only told this morning,” Sugawara justified.

“At any rate, if Sugawara-san’s analysis of what Guren told him is right, then we should get going,” Shinoa said. “We still haven’t searched everywhere and we still need to check the most important spot one more time. Let’s go,” And with that, Shinoa let the way to where they would start their search for the mysterious spell organization. The other four followed her quickly.

* * *

 

They spent about an hour, simply searching through the area to find the spell organization, but with no luck. Negative result upon negative result brought them to the place where they had had to end their searching last time. Now they were back.

“Is there any other place left, Mi-chan?” Shinoa asked Mitsuba, who was holding the map.

“Not as far as I can see,” Mitsuba answered.

“Then they should be here,” Shinoa answered. “Let’s try looking around some of the spots we missed last time,” she said before walking to one spot which she thought they hadn’t searched before. Everyone else went to look too.

None of them were walking together, this went for Nishinoya as well as he headed towards an odd looking building. He didn’t normally recall many buildings, and especially not from this area, but he remembered this one. This was the building that had collapsed on one half but the other half looked like it hadn’t been touched at all. He remembered they had been standing somewhere around the broken half, by a puddle, when they discovered that they had swapped places with someone else.

Nishinoya went to that building to take a look around. He didn’t find anything while looking around outside. There were still traces of where the puddle had been, but it had almost dried out completely. That was about the most interesting discovery he made, until he headed to the complete part of the building. He thought he saw a light through one of the windows. It looked like a reflection and Nishinoya might have believed it was if it hadn’t been for the fact that the sun wasn’t out. That was why he decided to walk closer to the window.

Nothing seemed to happen as Nishinoya walked closer to the building and the window which he had seen the reflection through. As he got close enough, he went to stand with his back against the wall at first before sneaking under the window and then peaking over the frame.

What Nishinoya saw, made him jump backwards in slight surprise. It wasn’t like what he saw was anything out of the ordinary, just another pair of eyes staring back at him. He hadn’t expected that.

Quickly, he stood up and hurried back to the street where the others were looking around to find the organization.

“There is someone in that building!” he called and pointed to the building, causing the other four to look up at him in slight surprise.

“Which building?” Shinoa asked.

“That one!” Nishinoya pointed once more and now everyone made their way up to him to look at the building.

“I admit, I did find it was rather strange,” Shinoa said while looking at the building. “What did you see, Nishinoya-san?” she asked.

“Some light, and when I went to take a closer look, someone was staring back at me,” Nishinoya explained.

Shinoa looked to Mitsuba who looked back at her before she made her decision.

“It’s worth checking out. The door is right there,” she said, and so the group walked to the door, leading inside the building.

The door was an ordinary door with the single difference that it was made entirely of solid iron. It was a very secure door that wouldn’t break down easily and would keep one safe, at least for a little while.

“Do we open it?” Mitsuba asked, a bit insecurely.

“What else do you do with a door?” Shinoa asked. Then she grabbed the door handle and pulled it downward. She then leaned all her weight against the door and pushed with all her might. It only budged a little bit, enough that they knew it wasn’t locked.

Kageyama was first to react. He walked up beside Shinoa and helped her push, Nishinoya went second and Sugawara and Mitsuba went to help as the last ones, leaning all their weight against the heavy door. With the help from their combined strengths the door was finally pushed open and revealed the dark inside of the building.

“Interesting,” Shinoa said, slightly out of breath from the effort of pushing the door open. “There doesn’t seem to be a soul in here.

“Shouldn’t we say something?” Sugawara asked her in a hushed voice.

“You’re right,” Shinoa said. “Hello!” she yelled out loud. “We’re coming in!”

At these words, they all walked inside the building and before they knew it, they heard the door slam shut behind them, leaving them all blinded in complete darkness. Before either of them knew it, they felt as a cloth was tied around their heads, covering their eyes. Shinoa and Mitsuba both tried to resist, but the others were too slow to make an attempt.

“You girls stay still and allow us to blindfold you or your friends will feel the consequences,” a voice said.

“What kind of consequences are we talking about?” Shinoa asked, staring in the direction of the voice. It was still too dark for her to see.

The owner of the voice sighed. “You are with the Imperial Demon Army. We want to keep our secrets, that include our identities and whatever experiments we may be doing.”

“You do realize we already know of your existence and part of your experiments, right?” Shinoa asked.

“We still don’t need you to know more than that,” the voice said. “Stand still now. We also got your pigtail-friend.”

Shinoa sighed, giving up and stood still, allowing them to tie the cloth around her eyes. She then felt as she was pushed closer to the others. Their backs were against each other and she guessed that the strangers inside the building were surrounding them.

“I can’t believe it,” Shinoa whispered.

“Me neither,” Sugawara, who was standing right beside her, answered. “It’s strange, to think that they were right there next to us this entire time.”


	24. Goodbye

“So,” the one who had demanded them to be blindfolded said. “I would first like to know what you hope to gain from coming here. Are you out for information about our experiments? Are you looking to stop us?” he asked.

“If the Imperial Demon Army wanted to stop you, don’t you think they would have sent more people than five small, innocent kids like us?” Shinoa asked.

No one spoke for a bit. All were thinking their separate thoughts. Those from the other organization were probably just trying to process what Shinoa was saying while everyone from Shinoa’s squad were just wondering why she would suddenly describe all of them as innocent.

The man who spoke coughed once and then spoke up again. “If you don’t want to stop us, then what are you looking for us for?” he asked.

“Something that only relates to this squad. You see, about two weeks ago three of the five members of my squad disappeared and in their place came the three boys you see in this group. We presume that our missing squad members are taking their place in the world they come from. We would therefore like to have them swap back as soon as possible.” Shinoa said.

“Interesting,” the voice said. “So we are dealing with a swap of people between worlds?” he asked. “I would like to know more about this different world. Assistant One and Two, go figure out what experiment could have caused this to happen and find out if it is at all possible to undo this accident. I will try to make it work in our favor in the meantime.”

“In your favor?” Sugawara was the one asking the skeptical question.

“Not to worry. We will just ask questions and you will answer. It might help us in further investigation and if all goes well, nothing like this will ever happen again,” the man stated.

“Can that be trusted?” Nishinoya wondered. He hadn’t intended to let anyone hear him, but the man who was speaking heard him fine.

“If something should happen it will just be another unfortunate accident,” he said.

“Let’s trust them for now,” Shinoa said. “We will get nowhere with the situation if we don’t.”

The other agreed that this made perfect sense and therefore they also willingly kept up as their arms were being grabbed and they were led somewhere without being able to see a thing.

“I take it the blindfolds will not be removed?” Shinoa asked.

“No. We can’t let anyone see our faces.” The man said. “I ask that you please don’t remove them either. We gain more benefits from treating our guests nicely.”

“And it’s so nice to have your sight taken away,” Mitsuba muttered.

“You will be allowed to remove the blindfold once you are back outside,” the man said.

“It is unsettling that you get to see our faces while we don’t see yours though.” Shinoa said.

“It’s not like we’ll need the information for anything. This world is not interesting to our organization, aside from how we can use the mistakes made here to prevent another world from ending.” He explained. “We have reached the conference room. You will now be led to a seat. Do you want anything to drink?”

“Thank you, but I would rather not accept anything from you except your help with our situation,” Shinoa answered with a hint of coldness in her voice.

“I don’t want anything either,” Mitsuba said.

Sugawara, Nishinoya and Kageyama all declined the offer as well while they and the girls were led to chairs and sat down on them. The chairs were rather uncomfortable, only made of wood, like those chairs you would normally find at school. The table was made of wood too. Sugawara could feel as much as he stretched his hand out in front of him to see if there really was a table or if they were being lied to.

“Assistant Seventeen, will you make some tea and bring out six cups for me and our guests? Maybe if I drink they will drink as well,” the man said and Shinoa and the others listened as someone left the room.

“I thought we declined your offer,” Shinoa said.

“You did, Little Lady, but I know you only did it because of mistrust in me,” the man said. “Anyways, while we are waiting for Assistant Seventeen to come back, do you mind answering a couple of my questions?” He didn’t wait for them to answer before he asked the first. “It is you three boys who come from a different world than this world right? It is correctly understood that it’s another world, right?” he asked.

“It is,” Sugawara answered, figuring it did no harm to tell this, at least not if they would be going back soon.

“Do you remember what it was like?” the man asked.

“Could you specify that?” Sugawara asked in return.

“What did you see, feel, hear, was there anything that indicated that something was about to happen?” the man asked.

“There was a white light under our feet right before we came here. As we were brought, we could only see white,” Kageyama said. “At least that was the case for me.”

Sugawara and Nishinoya confirmed that they had had the same experience and Nishinoya specified further that he had neither heard nor felt anything.

The conversation continued. Most of the questions centered around the “Moment of transportation” as the man called it, and the world which Sugawara, Kageyama and Nishinoya originally came from. As they spoke, they were all served tea, but the man was too engaged in the conversation and the members of Shinoa’s squad were still too mistrusting of him to touch anything offered to them.

After about twenty minutes of intense questioning, the door to the room finally opened and they could hear the sound of two people entering the room.

“Leader, Assistant One reporting,” one new voice said. “We have found the experiment from two weeks ago and managed to stabilize it. We advise that you all go at once.”

“If you have stabilized the connection, can’t it wait until I’m done?” the man asked.

“Sadly no, Leader. We have to act now or the connection will disappear for good. I am not sure we will be able to reestablish it.”

“It is as Guren said!” Sugawara exclaimed.

“Don’t say such things here!” Shinoa snapped.

“Who is Guren?” the man asked.

“No one important,” Sugawara replied.

“Then, we should get going,” the man said. “If you would all please stand up and follow me?” he demanded.

Shinoa and the others stood and they were all led out of the room and down hallways and a staircase to a room located somewhere underground.

As they entered the room, Mitsuba and Shinoa were stopped just by the door while Sugawara, Nishinoya and Kageyama were led further inside the room.

“And you are not allowing us to remove the blindfolds?” Nishinoya asked.

“Of course not,” the man said. “There is no guarantee that this will succeed. But you should pray it does.”

“Why are you putting it like that?” Sugawara asked. The man should know that they all wanted this to work. They wanted to go back to their own world.

“Because, as it turns out, you only have one chance. If it should fail, you will probably never be able to go back, and we are running out of time.”

“I’m not gonna live in a world like this any longer if I have a choice,” Kageyama said with determination.

“Kiyoko-san isn’t here!” Nishinoya exclaimed in frustration.

“There is that, and the fact that our teammates probably need us a lot back there,” Sugawara said.

“What do we need to do?” Nishinoya asked in desperation.

“Nothing,” the man said. “Except preparing yourselves. It might help if you think of your own world, but I can’t guarantee anything.”

They were about to prepare themselves mentally to leave this post-apocalyptic world when Nishinoya suddenly remembered something and turned his head in the direction they had come from, knowing that Mitsuba and Shinoa were somewhere around there.

“Thanks for taking care of us!” he said.

“Yes, thank you for watching out for us and supporting us in this situation,” Sugawara said. “And sorry for all the trouble we have caused.”

“We were glad we could help,” Shinoa said. “And thank you for helping us solving this problem.”

“Be safe if you get back.” Mitsuba said.

Sugawara found Kageyama’s side with his elbow and pushed him a bit. “You should say something too, Kageyama.”

“Yeah, say something,” Nishinoya demanded.

“Thank you for your help,” Kageyama said.

“Alright,” the man said. “We are starting!”

Before Nishinoya, Sugawara and Kageyama knew it, their visions turned white and they felt as their bodies left the post-apocalyptic world.


	25. Overlap

They were sitting in the bus, driving to their practice game. Yuu and Daichi were sitting together near the front. Yoichi was sitting by himself, right in front of the seat where Hinata and Kimizuki were sitting.

“Nothing has happened,” Asahi leaned in from behind to whisper these words to Daichi. “Will it be okay?” he asked.

Daichi shrugged, not knowing the answer to that question.

“Are you not nervous about today’s game, Kageyama?” Hinata’s voice could be heard clearly all the way through the bus.

“Of course not,” Kimizuki answered. He was speaking in a lower volume than the real Kageyama would have used but no one commented on that fact.

“There is the major issue…” Daichi muttered while watching Hinata and Kimizuki argue.

“Kiageyama?” Yuu asked, barely avoiding the mistake.

“Yeah,” Daichi said. “If the real Kageyama doesn’t come back, Oikawa is going to see right through.”

“What about me and… Nishinoya?” Yuu asked.

“I don’t think he cares enough about you two to notice any changes.” Daichi said. “And keep it down, Suga.”

Yuu nodded his head while looking to the coach, the teacher and the two lady-managers. Luckily it looked like no one had heard anything.

“But then why Kageyama?” he whispered as lowly as he could.

“Kageyama is his former junior. They also play the same position, setter, and in general, there are a lot from Kageyama’s middle school at Aoba Jousei.” Daichi explained.

Yuu nodded his head, figuring that he understood. He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. Daichi turned away from him and looked out the window instead and as such, around five minutes passed by before he heard Hinata yelling again, but this time there was a strange sound to his voice.

“Oi! Kageyama! Wake up!” he yelled.

Daichi turned around not only to see Kimizuki leaning against Hinata’s shoulder but also Yoichi was leaning against the window next to him. He then looked at Yuu who still looked to be sleeping, yet he knew there was something going on now. It couldn’t just be a coincidence that the three who used to be strangers, had suddenly fallen asleep while no one else had. Nor would it be a coincidence that neither of them seemed to be able to wake up.

* * *

 

The last thing Kimizuki noticed was how Hinata’s face turned white along with all the other surroundings and he found that he was suddenly lying down and staring upward. It wasn’t something unfamiliar. The vibe he got from this place was similar to the vibe he got when communicating with Kiseki Oo.

Kimizuki then did the first thing that came to mind and sat up to look around. Not so far away, a black-haired guy was standing. He recognized this person. He had seen him in the mirror a couple of times. His surname was Kageyama.

“What have you done?” Kimizuki asked as he stood up and approached Kageyama.

Kageyama turned around with a slightly irritated expression. “Nothing.” He said. “What are you doing here?”

“I’d like to know too,” Kimizuki said. “What happened?”

“We found the way back they say.” Kageyama replied.

“So you did?” Kimizuki asked.

“You piss me a little off,” Kageyama said.

“Hmm… You seem to be the only one to feel that way,” Kimizuki said. “So, how do we move on from here?”

“No one told me a way,” Kageyama said.

“I wonder how Yoichi managed to get back earlier…” Kimizuki wondered.

“I think Nishinoya said something about it just happening…” Kageyama answered.

“You are saying we have to wait?” Kimizuki asked.

Kageyama didn’t answer, he just nodded his head.

Kimizuki sighed and turned slightly away, but as he did so, he thought he noticed as Kageyama’s black hair was turning slightly gray and started fading into white.

“Looks like we don’t have to wait too much longer,” Kimizuki smirked as he said this and Kageyama looked up, nodding his head. “You are up against some people you used to know, good luck with that,” Kimizuki said.

“Thanks,” Kageyama muttered as both their visions turned white again.

* * *

 

“You awake?” As Yoichi opened his eyes he looked up into white and saw a face above his own. It took him a few times of blinking to recognize Nishinoya.

“Nishinoya-kun!” he exclaimed, sitting up.

“That’s me!” Nishinoya grinned, pointing at himself. “When’s the game?” he asked.

“We were on our way there,” Yoichi answered. “What happened at your end?” he asked.

“We found the organization and they could turn things back. We should be on our way back now and just crossing paths or something,” Nishinoya sat back in a crisscross position and looked at Yoichi who sat in the same way.

“So it’s over?” Yoichi asked. “It’s a shame. I was actually enjoying it.”

“Me too,” Nishinoya said. “But I think your world is a little too much about mind-games. I’m never gonna get used to that.”

Yoichi smiled. “And I’m not getting much out of your world.” Yoichi said. “Nevertheless, it’s been fun. I won’t forget this time.”

Nishinoya laughed. “Me neither,” he said. “Ah, Yoichi, you’re fading!”

Yoichi smiled. “So are you,” he said as he noticed.

“Then, bye!” Nishinoya exclaimed. “Good luck back there, and thank Shinoa and Mitsuba for looking after us.”

“You tell everyone else the same, and Saeko-san too,” Yoichi said. “They were all a big help to us.”

“Will do!” Nishinoya said as they both disappeared from the pure white world.

 

Yuu opened his eyes to a white world and thought he was looking into the mirror. It wasn’t like he was really, he wasn’t even looking at something that reflected his own face. He had just gotten used to seeing the face of that other guy that he had almost forgotten what it was like to see his own face in the mirror.

“Am I dreaming?” Yuu asked.

“Maybe, maybe not.” Sugawara answered.

“What’s that?” Yuu rubbed his head, trying to figure out what he meant.

“I don’t know. I think not though.” Sugawara answered.

“Then what?” Yuu asked. “What’s going on?”

“If I have to be optimistic, I think we are on our way to our own worlds. So you are Yuuichirou Hyakuya?” he asked.

“Yeah, and you are Su… Su… Suga… Sugawara!” Yuu exclaimed. For some reason, it was a little difficult to remember when he had to say the name. It was different when he had to just respond to it. “What do you mean optimistically?”

“Trouble with the memorizing?” Sugawara chuckled. “I mean that it could also be that we have been sent in here but are going to go back later on, if things go wrong.”

“You don’t strike me as a pessimistic thinker,” Yuu said.

“I leave that to Asahi, usually,” Sugawara said. “I just think it’s better to consider both options possible than to exclude one and then end up disappointed if it is the one you didn’t keep open that ends up becoming reality.”

“It’s complex,” Yuu said.

“Sorry, I forgot you are not that smart,” Sugawara smiled. “That’s the second time,”

“Huh?” Yuu asked, raising an eyebrow.

“You’ll probably be questioned by Guren when you return,” Sugawara said.

“What are you talking about?” Yuu asked.

“Even you should know that at least.” Sugawara answered.

Yuu thought and then it clicked in place. “You slipped up in front of Guren?” he asked.

“It’s not so hard to do when he was suspecting me from the start,” Sugawara said. “Don’t tell me you managed to keep it hidden all this time.”

“The entire team knows what’s happening, including the pretty manager,” Yuu said. “But she was the only one who figured it out along the way.”

“I see… that does make it easier to deal with.” Sugawara said.

Yuu noticed something as Sugawara spoke and started staring at him. “You’re turning white!” he exclaimed.

“Huh! I am?!” Sugawara asked before he looked at Yuu. “You are too,” he said.

Yuu stared down himself. “Then… this is the end?” he asked.

“Yeah, looks like it,” Sugawara said. “If you’re going back, tell Shinoa and Mitsuba that we all really appreciated all the hard work they did for us and that they watched out for us.”

“Sure!” Yuu said. He fell silent for a bit, but then remembered something he needed to say as well, to those from the ‘normal’ world.

“Sugawara!” he called. “Tell the others that they were a really great help. And tell Daichi that I learned a lot from him!”

However, Yuu never heard if Sugawara had heard him, because, as he finished talking, the entire place had turned completely white again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did consider writing another chapter for the story to round it all up more properly. But I had a feeling (and I still have it) that if I did that, it would just end up becoming some boring, cheesy crap that no one would be able to enjoy, including me. So after asking my friend about it and after she agreed with this decision, I decided to end the story here. I really hope you agree with this choice as well.   
> Thank you to everyone who gave kudos to this story and thank you to the ones who reviewed. It means a lot.   
> Thank you all for reading my story and I hope you'll read more of my works in the future. 
> 
> Jackie

**Author's Note:**

> How was this idea sparked? Well, I think it was when I was watching the 2nd season of Haikyuu this summer and while listening to three certain voices, I couldn't stop thinking about three other certain characters. Everyone who has done a bit of seiyuu research should know what characters I'm talking about. I just got to think of how it would be if the one the Haikyuu character shared seiyuu with was to live their life, how bad could it get? And so this idea entered my head. What's funny is that my friend thought the same thing while watching the 2nd season of Haikyuu too.   
> Anyways, I hope you enjoy this story. Thank you for reading the first chapter. 
> 
> Jackie


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